If You Own One Of The Beatles' Rarest Vinyl Records, You Could Resell It For More Than $15,000

In the United States during the mid-1960s, the British Invasion was in full swing. No, this wasn't an "incursion of an army for conquest or plunder," as Miriam-Webster Dictionary defines invasion. Instead, the British Invasion represents a musical movement where bands from the United Kingdom achieved sudden and spectacular popularity with young Americans, especially teenagers.

Some of those acts included such names as The Kinks and The Rolling Stones, but none could touch the level of success achieved by the Beatles. Following several television appearances on "The Ed Sullivan Show" during 1964, a fanaticism called "Beatlemania" erupted worldwide, leading to outsized album sales and burgeoning concert audiences.

As you might imagine, many Beatles records that were manufactured during that era, though now old, aren't worth a ton of money like some records due to the sheer number produced. However, one version of the Fab Four's 1966 album "Yesterday and Today" is rare enough to fetch more than $15,000 in used condition. If still sealed in its original packaging, that number doubles to upwards of $30,000. What makes this particular LP so valuable isn't so much the record itself, but rather, the front cover artwork.

The LP record's title "Yesterday and Today" could be taken quite literally. That's because the record was a compilation featuring some older songs as well as premiering a few new tracks. It's worth mentioning that the older material was either not released in the United States or previously only available in "singles" format. You might recognize a single as a smaller diameter record, yet featuring a large hole in the center. "Yesterday and Today's" eleven tracks consist of staples like "Yesterday," "We Can Work It Out," and "Day Tripper." 

For the front cover of "Yesterday and Today," which measures roughly 12 inches square, the band's management provided an image which had been taken several months earlier by a photographer named Robert Whitaker. Indeed, the photo was a radical piece of conceptual art and really never intended for mass publication. In the image, the four members of the Beatles are all wearing white butchers smocks and holding large pieces of raw meat, right along with life-size parts from plastic baby dolls — including a decapitated head.

Experts agree that about 750,000 albums with the shocking "butcher cover" art were produced by the band's label, Capitol Records. Before the album was released to the general public, several hundred copies were sent to music industry insiders such as radio station disc jockeys and music critics in order to create a sense of hype for the new album to help boost sales.

"Yesterday and Today" got hype, all right. Except it was the wrong kind. The reaction to the controversial cover from recipients of the early advance copies of the album was highly negative. So much so that a decision was made by record company executives to recall all of the bloody doll covers. Except that by now, all 750,000 of the retail copies of the album had already shipped to distributors. 

To remedy the situation, Capitol Records sent letters to everyone who received the albums, asking that they ship them back to Capitol for modification. Said modification depended on which of Capitol's three records plants across the United States received the recalled records. In Jacksonville, Illinois, the covers were discarded in a landfill and replaced with a highly sedate photo of the Fab Four gathered around a large luggage trunk. Production facilities in Los Angeles and Scranton, Pennsylvania, went with the same "trunk" artwork, except it was a large adhesive sticker applied directly on top of the controversial butcher artwork, rather than an entire new cover.

Between the cost of return shipping for the butcher covers and re-shipping the trunk covers to distributors, along with the stickers or new covers themselves, Capitol's expense for this disaster is estimated to be between $200,000 and $250,000. Factored for inflation, that's more than $2 million in todays money.

Excellent condition "butcher cover" copies of "Yesterday and Today" will bring five-figures on the auction block. For example, one sold for $17,000 on eBay in May 2024. However, a personal copy belonging to John Lennon — and signed by two other Beatles — sold for the truly stunning amount of nearly $234,000 in 2019. In fact, even the butcher covers that are disguised with stickers are still worth a bundle. One such example sold at Heritage Auctions in 2022 for $3,375. Note that it's not difficult to view traces of the butcher cover underneath the trunk cover sticker.

This situation gets even more complicated because, way back when, some enterprising "Yesterday and Today" owners discovered that the trunk sticker could be removed to expose the original butcher cover lurking underneath. If done carefully with steam, the result is nearly indistinguishable from an unmodified original butcher cover. However, many sticker removals were removed amateurishly, destroying both the sticker and the butcher cover. Nowadays, it's difficult for even a pro to remove the trunk sticker because the glue has gotten tenacious with age. 

It didn't take long for the first 750,000 copies of "Yesterday and Today" to sell through and subsequent pressings of this album were packaged more conventionally than the first three-quarter million. Finally, original copies of the recall letter from Capitol Records to its distributors have value, too. Similar to valuable old concert posters, these letters can be worth thousands of dollars, in fact.