Christmas Portrait West Germany Made in France

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Rick-An Ordinary Fool

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This is weird, never seen this before. The rare Christmas Portrait CD that was made in West Germany was also made in France. I don't remember discussing this here before. I thought this rare CD was only pressed in West Germany. My CD clearly says on the outer edge Made in West Germany by Polygram. It has the same catalog #

It appears this CD was also pressed in France. The booklet appears to be pressed in West Germany but the CD cleary says Made in France PDO. I wonder what PDO stands for? How was the master tape also used in France?


 
I'm not surprised at all. This was, after all, the still-early days of CD manufacturing and there weren't that many plants that did so. PDO stands for Philips Dupont Optical, and the factory in France was used just as much as the West German plant to make CDs for distribution mainly in Europe, but really worldwide as well. The fact that they did a run on the CHRISTMAS PORTRAIT disc is not unlike having different US discs that may have been pressed in Los Angeles or New York. But it does create interesting variations for collectors.

Harry
 
So it's possible now that more of these were pressed than we originally thought. I would have to guess that this France pressing was more limited run since this is the first one I've seen in all these yrs. I wish we had access to how many of these were pressed in each country. I don't know about you but I'm curious how this sounds and compares to the West German version.
 
I would expect that the French and West German disc are digitally bit identical. This was obviously a pressing that they anticipated needing a large number of copies of, so West Germany farmed some out to the French factory. The tiny verbiage on the inserts are all for Germany, so it was just a matter of letting the French factory handle some of the load.

Not uncommon at all.

Harry
 
Just in time for the holidays...Just a heads up...this appears to be the rare German Pressing of Christmas Portrait on CD, also from a well known trusted Japan seller. There is a sticker that says 25th anniv so that is throwing me off.

Harry can you confirm this looks like the rare pressing, right?
Just wanted to give a heads up if case anyone doesn't have this collectible CD. If I might add as well, this is an unbelievable price which is also throwing me off since this CD fetches high prices.

 
Yep. There's a bunch of them floating around with the 25th Anniversary sticker, which means it was pressed in 1994. Though it's not the same vintage as the ones that you and I have, Chris, it is still a valid original-mix pressing. You won't hear the choir on "Ave Maria" Mark, so I think you'll be happy.

Harry
 
Harry, I didn't know they pressed this again in 1994, I don't think I've seen one with the official A&M anniv sticker, that's pretty cool. So I'm assuming the sticker is on the outside of the jewel case, so how would one know this was pressed in 94 if not for the sticker? I have 2 copies of the original release on CD and I just looked at both mine compared to this one above and the catalog # 394 726-2 matches and if you look closely all the logo's A&M, AM+ Gema, AAD Compact Disc logo, everything matches exactly.

This is awesome Mark, so glad you got it!!
 
Harry, I didn't know they pressed this again in 1994, I don't think I've seen one with the official A&M anniv sticker, that's pretty cool. So I'm assuming the sticker is on the outside of the jewel case, so how would one know this was pressed in 94 if not for the sticker? I have 2 copies of the original release on CD and I just looked at both mine compared to this one above and the catalog # 394 726-2 matches and if you look closely all the logo's A&M, AM+ Gema, AAD Compact Disc logo, everything matches exactly.

This is awesome Mark, so glad you got it!!

I first heard about the 25th version over at the Hoffman forum. It seems that a number of these have surfaced in recent years on eBay - still not REAL common, but I've been surprised at the number of times I've seen it.

It's possible that PolyGram had pressed a ton of these back when first issued, and they were withdrawn. Then somehow someone got the go-ahead to put them back into the marketplace. That would account for the identical nature of the discs and inserts - and all they had to do was slap a sticker on it. Until someone in officialdom gives us the story, all we can do is offer conjecture. But these are real and genuine.\

Harry
 
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