Collecting log: Brilliant Disguise Japanese custom promotion-only advanced 7" vinyl

Two major Brilliant 7" rarities: Promotion-only pre-release in Japan and Italian jukebox pressing, both coming with a unique custom insert sleeve. One of the Japanese copies I own is in fine condition (center) while the other has cellotape removed on the insert sleeve (left), as generally observed with Japanese promo 7" singles leaked and floating around from radio stations. The Italian single contains a colored title strip with a misprint (Brilliant "Disguide").

Brilliant Disguise continues. Speaking of the 7" single release of this title, the most sought-after collectible is probably the Japanese promotion-only advanced pressing (CBS/SONY XDSP 93095) released with the unique black & white picture insert. Alternatively, some collectors may mention the Italian jukebox 7" (CBS JC 152095 7) which also comes with the custom insert sleeve and is seldom seen; however, others are skeptical to its authenticity (I have no idea as to the authenticity of this very nice-looking release). By the way, about a week ago, I found a copy of the Japanese issue being auctioned at Yahoo! Japan although it was the picture insert only. I was just interested in the final result and so followed the auction to the end.

It's a custom sleeve insert only without the 7" vinyl. The auction
ended with a total of 10 bids.

It ended up selling for 2,600 Japanese Yen (roughly $23.50 at the current exchange rate) as shown on the right, which in my opinion is reasonable taking into account that it represents one of the only two unique promo sleeves available to Springsteen's 7" records released in Japan [another one is, needles to say, Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town live (CBS/SONY XDSP 93026)].

Two examples of "date" stamped insert sleeves of the
Japanese promo 7": I Wanna Marry You/Be True
(CBS/SONY 07SP 525) and Atlantic City/Mansion On
The Hill (CBS/SONY 07SP 657)

The auctioned INSERT must have originated from a radio station, as it has a couple of scotch tape marks on front. In fact, many Japanese promo 7" issues in circulation suffer from such yellow-colored glue traces as a result of removing index tags that had been taped on the sleeve by radio station staff. The sleeves are also frequently stamped with the date of acquisition or on-sale date (see the picture left). Thus, generally, the fully intact copies are hard to come by. One of the two copies in my possession has indeed such unwanted modifications (tape marks) as seen in the image on the top of this page.

On the rear side of the insert sleeve are mainly Japanese writings, such as a few lines of advertising copy notes for this single release that are found on the top, and the bottom half of the sleeve is devoted to three small sections that include the largely abbreviated biography (which wrongly describes that LIVE/1975-85 is released in the end of 1985), the highest chart position on Billboard Hot 100 of the seven TOP 10 singles released from his then last studio-recording album BORN IN THE U.S.A., and the brief introduction about the then-forthcoming new album TUNNEL OF LOVE to be released on October 21st (reporting that besides the E Street Band, Springsteen might employ Nashville session players for the album recording).

Although the A-side labels of my two copies are pink-stamped, the label variant exists without stamp markings. As usual for the CBS/SONY releases, the matrix numbers are stamped but not hand-etched on the trail-off area. The JIS acronym (for Japanese Industrial Standards) is found only on Side A.

As the Lost In The Flood collector's web site briefly reports, there is a discrepancy in the catalog number for this custom promo release: XDSP 93095 on the sleeve and XDSP 93096 on the white labels. The machine-typed matrix numbers on the dead wax are consistent with the latter (XDSP-93096A1 on Side A and XDSP-93096B1 on Side B). A google search resulted in another promotion-only Japanese 7" vinyl with the catalog number XDSP 93095 for We Are Music performed by a US female singer called Martika. These indicate that the catalog number on the sleeve is a typographical error. There are label variations on Side A, with and without pinked stamp markings noting track name (both in English and Japanese) and length (4 : 15), release date (October 10th), and artist name. No variation has been found on the Side B label that is totally free of stamp markings, only with the catalog number, side indication and sample notification (with three Kanji characters) in black.

It's translucent bronze or amber upon exposure to a LED light
luminary. Note that this is a common feature to both promotional
and regular Springsteen 7" pressings from CBS/SONY JAPAN.

Finally, although the disc normally looks black, it turns transparent when exposed to high-intensity light. This, however, is not specific to this particular promotional pressing. As far as I examined, all the Springsteen 7" records from CBS/SONY JAPAN are the same in terms of light-dependent transparency. As mentioned on this blog previously (for example, see here or here), most of Springsteen's 7" singles are translucent red on the US Columbia label. Although both the US and Japanese 7" singles show the transparency under strong illumination, the main difference lies in the material and method used to make the disc, as the US records are styrene-molding whereas the Japanese ones are vinyl-pressing.