Welcome to Record Sleeves.com

PICTURE SLEEVES
From day one, everybody and his mother collected records. But why should you be like everybody else? NOW's the time for a new collecting experience to begin.

PICTURE SLEEVES are destined to become the newest and most exciting collectable art form to come along in ages. Just as cartoon cells, comic books and movie posters have become very valuable and highly sought after memorabilia, 45-rpm "picture sleeves" will too.

From what I've learned, worldwide, there are probably only a few hundred folks gathering picture sleeves, in earnest. Most have been at it for around 20 years and have gathered about 2,500 sleeves.

For you, as a beginner, this means very little competition; at least for now. Here's your chance to catch up to them in a matter of days for, most likely, a fraction of what they might have paid originally.

If you consider the value of their time spent wondering through thrift stores, yard sales and classifieds of music publications, what I offer is a "steal".

Take a few minutes and peruse through the nearly 12,000 colorful, memory making, images I've personally collected since a boy in 1953. They span 5 decades and cover every type of music.

It's true!

Picture sleeves are easier than records to store and display. They're also a lot more unique and fun. When showing picture sleeves to friends and guests you'll most likely hear comments like: "I thought he was white!" or "I never knew there was a girl in the group!"

"Investables": Collectable investments.

PICTURE SLEEVES only increase in value. Each year fewer and fewer are produced. This is going to be a great new adventure. Don't miss out on it.

SO YOU WANNA BUY SOME SLEEVES?

Well here's the lowdown. These picture sleeves were all collected by myself, Don Daro, beginning in 1953. They've come from radio stations, record stores and juke box operators.

We've attempted to grade and keep track of them as best possible, but there are a lot of 'em. You can't imagine how many years and how many people were involved in getting these babies to your screen.

Grading them was a nightmare for the folks who did it. This painstaking project took over a year itself. A defect can be in various stages or degrees of severity.

In some cases when there were numerous copies of the same sleeve, the person grading them could occasionally overlook a staple hole or slight ring wear. ("Ring wear" is common and shows in instances where the sleeve ink has rubbed off).

Scanning them took a month alone with a high-speed scanner. Normally the best sleeve is displayed in all duplicate offerings. In most cases the "hit" side is shown, but not always. Sometimes the scanner can make a "nice" sleeve looked horrible and a "rough" one look fine.

We've tried to price them according to how much of a distraction a defect is. The comprehensive grade code should be helpful. We want everybody to be happy with his or her purchase and come back often.

SLEEVE GRADING

The sleeve grading or condition is a means by which I've gauged the quality of the sleeves that may be purchased from this site, when you're browsing or searching through the database.

NOTE: I've tried to be fairly critical with my grading, such as; with 'Ring Wear'. In a good percentage of these cases, this wear is slight and besides, its severity is reflected in the price. In most cases of 'Ink Writing' it means only the 'year' or at worst the name of a restaurant. All sleeves are in at least 'near-mint' or better condition, signified by three 'stars', unless a letter appears in the 'condition' column. Multiple letters indicate a combination of conditions.