Collecting log: GREETINGS US test pressing LP from the Pitman factory (and its comparison with Jim Cretecos's copy)

According to the labels on the wax, this copy is pressed at the Columbia Records' pressing plant in Pitman, N.J., and includes a stapled 10-page lyric sheet (the lyrics for Blinded By The Light are printed across 2 pages and the remaining eight songs on one page each). Inset, Each song is copyrighted by Sioux City Music Ltd., the music company derived from Laurel Canyon Ltd. (both run by Mike Appel and Jim Cretecos) that became the management-exclusive arm after separation of music division.
 

Original vinyl bootleg releases that feature early demo and studio
recordings as far back as the Steel Mill era. These titles were
already available by the early 1980s.

Springsteen has been a prolific music composer since his early career, as demonstrated by the existence of a number of recorded songs. Such early recordings mostly consist of solo acoustic performances recorded at home for song publishing purposes or at 914 Sound Studios in New York City for the debut and second albums, besides alternate takes or different mixes for the tracks that appear on the two albums. Small fractions of these have been released officially for the first time in TRACKS and recently in CHAPTER & VERSE. Surely way before these official releases, there were various vinyl and CD bootleg titles circulated (the most famous examples of which are a series of the PRODIGAL SON/BEFORE THE FAME CD releases).

BEFORE THE FAME was once officially released March 1998 in Japan
and several promotional items, such as the custom promo-only
CD and T-shirts, were distributed for the domestic market.

Surprisingly, a substantial number of such recordings, in the forms of reel tapes (21 items), acetates (10 items) and test pressing (1 item), are going to be sold at auction (currently previewed at the web site of Backstage Auctions, Inc.)*, together with associated paper documents such as copyright certificates for the nine songs on GREETINGS FROM ASBURY PARK, N.J. According to the web site, these recordings and paper goods come directly from the private collection of Jim Cretecos, then junior partner of Mike Appel in Laurel Canyon Limited, also known as then co-manager of Springsteen and co-producer credited on his first two albums, who has kept these collectibles in his possession for the past 45 years (i.e. 1972 to 2017). One amazing item (#1711; starting bid is $2500.00) among others is an early acetate disc for the first album that has a radically different track configuration containing the still-unreleased Visitation at Fort Horne, the final track on the acetate which is replaced in favor of It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City on the released album.
*It seems that the auctions ended on November 12th, the next day this blog article was posted.

Due to a high starting bid set for each, obviously there is no chance for me to participate in any auctions of the listed items. There is only one collectible listed on the auction that I own: a test pressing copy for the GREETINGS ... album (item #1713 on the above-mentioned auction site). I obtained this test pressing from a U.S. seller through eBay at its very early days in the late 1990s (By the way, having searched for the user ID, I found that he's still an active Florida-based seller). As shown at the top of this page, the disc comes in a white plain sleeve and carries white Pitman test pressing labels on both sides just like those for the BORN TO RUN script cover pressing, which represents a typical figure as a US Columbia Records' test pressing issued in the 1970s.

Comparison of the matrix numbers between the two GREETINGS test pressings.
Left, from Jim Cretecos collection (smaller images);
Right, from my collection (larger images).

Acetate and test pressing discs are a major victim of counterfeit activity among highly valued music collectibles. Although I was mostly convinced of the authenticity of the copy through the communications with the seller, still I had a little uncertainty as to the suffix codes for the matrix numbers, P AL 31903-1D on Side 1 and P BL 31903-2C Side 2, which seemed not to be old enough to be a test pressing (more specifically, I was expecting the matrix number suffices like -1A/-2A for this copy although -1D/-2C might also indicate an early pressing).

The web page of Backstage Auctions displays very clear images for individual auctioned items**. So, I came up with an idea to confirm the authenticity of my copy using Cretecos's disc as a reference because it must be genuine directly taken from the collection of one of the two ex-managers/producers of the artist. I thought it would be possible to know the matrix numbers of the auctioned test pressing from its JPEG images shown on the auction site. In fact, the matrix numbers were totally invisible on the black dead wax in the downloaded pictures. By adjusting tone parameter on Photoshop, however, the machine-stamped numbers emerged successfully, which turned out to be identical to those of the disc in my possession, as shown above. This was a small but long-time potentially critical issue for me regarding the highly valuable collectible in my collection, and I am now happy to have solved it. Finally, I almost forgot to mention that my copy is accompanied by a stapled lyric sheet for all the nine songs on the album, which is apparently missing in the auctioned one. So, is my copy valued more than the minimum bit ($750.00) set for Cretecos's copy?
**Upon the end of the auctions, all item descriptions and images were once removed from the web site, but are currently shown again with the results ("Sold" or "Not For Sale"; as of Nov. 15th, AM 8:30, local time in Tokyo).