I have a negative sleeve and know a few people that own one and do believe that this one is a fake, along with the Meat is Murder 7" which is different to the 'standard' one, and the 12" is NOT Mayking!
Hi there, it happens I came by this forum and it happens I'm the owner of Art Serious, I'm running the auctions someone is trying to ruin.
All the allegations here are simply ridiculous.
Our feedback is low because we run auctions only when we have rare items to auction. Ebay fees are outrageous and listing a $20 record to get $8 or less after we have deducted all the fees (incl. paypal fees) and the price we paid for that record it's simply not worth the effort. So we list only rare records.
Another allegation was related to our feedback rating. Well, write to the last guys who left a feedback comment and ask them what they have purchased and how much they have paid for and especially if they were happy with the purchase.
A guy bought a Misfits LP, over $1500...happy customer who paid by Paypal. Another one purchased a Cure promo, 500 euro circa paid...another happy customer...and so on.
Why are the auctions private? Have you ever won an expensive item? And have you ever received an offer from an unknown ebayer for the same title at a cheaper priceafter the auction has ended? Or have you ever received an offer from an unknown ebayer while an auction you are partecipating to is still running? This is a serious problem and it happened to us several times. I always reported this offense to ebay and decided to run private listings only, as long as the item is expensive.
Fake or not fake?! The Meat is Murder 12" test pressing was manufactured by Mayking and it's quite easy to verify, the matrix info is correct and matches the matrix of the regular version. Also a serious collector should be informed before writing in a public forum and telling jokes such as "the 12" is not Mayking". Not all the 12" test pressings do have the Mayking label. There's a lot of confusion here and all the sources state something different. For example,
www.passionsjustlikemine.com states "not all test pressings have a 'Mayking' label, some have a plain light yellow one". While the well known Record Collector article does not even mention the 12" with the Mayking label. They made a mistake believing the 12" without the Mayking label is not a Mayking test pressing. Record collector made two entries for the 7" test pressing, one with Mayking label -they wrote this is a Mayking test pressing- and one with yellow label without mentioning Mayking. Again this is a Mayking test poressing too, to prove this there's the matrix info which is identical. The Meat is Murder 12" test pressing exists with white label and it was seen a couple of times in the last 4 years with the white label variation. Note, the same plate was used to press all these test pressings even if they were pressed in separate moments.
An interesting story has to be told about the negative sleeve. This comes from a bid Smiths collector who is also a music producer. He got it directly from a sales rep at Rough Trade at the time when the 45 was released in 1986....however identical to the 1984 2nd press. After an in-depth conversation about this negative sleeve was confirmed about 25 copies survived to destruction but the exact numer is impossible to score (may 35 or 15) because a few test proofs were printed and other copies may have been held by the typographer. The first test proofs were done by mistake using the same films of the first pressing, and turned out to be negative. Rough Trade evaluated the chance to release it that way, with inverted colors after replacing the films of course. Another short run was printed after the plans changed to the original one. Please note there are negative sleeves with the Manchester address and negative sleeves with the London address. The sales rep was unable to confirm the number of survived copies of each sleeve but the first one with the Manchester address should be less. I will not write name of the RT sales rep here, but if you wanna get his name feel free to email me.
As to the first allegation "he/she is trying to convince buyers to pay via money order, wire transfer or bipay.com"....it's wrong....why not to write and ask about the requirements to pay by Paypal? It's that simple, isn't it.
Paypal fees are simply outrageous but I realize buyers feel more comfortable to pay through Paypal. If the buyer will add the Paypal fees to the total we will be more than glad to accept Paypal.
In any case our policy is 100% satisfaction guaranteed, so if for any reason the buyer is not satisfied he/she can return the item for a fulll refund (minus shipping). No questions asked!
I'm open to suggestions and to a fair and polite convesation.
And before closing this long post I should mention a private deal about 2 UNPARALLELED Smiths rarities we may auction in the near future.- It's up to the owner who has still to take a decision. I'm talking about the unreleased reel to reel 16 track master tape of the Decibel Studio demos from 1982 and the original cassette tape on which Morrissey and Marr recorded 'I Want a Boy For My Birthday' in 1982 in Marr's bedroom. The original one, not a copy of the 30 sec. clip.
I will not tell the full story behind these two beatiful rarities, I think the owner would not like it if I disclosed too much info. This master tape was recorded in 1982 when "The Smiths" as such didn't exist at that time. Johnny Marr met Morrissey in 1982 and they started to create some music. At this stage they recorded 'I Want a Boy For My Birthday' in Johnny's bedroom on a simple 2 or 4 track recorder. Just Morrissey on vocal and Marr on guitar.
Then they began to write some songs of their own. E.g. Suffer Little Children and The Hand That Rocks The Cradle. Johnny Marr knew a lot of people in the 'music scene' in Manchester. He arranged with Dale Hibbert to record these songs in the Decibel Studios in Manchester. Dale Hibbert was a studio engineer there and he was also a bass player. Dale managed to use the studio for free after midnight. So they engaged a certain Simon Wolstencroft to play drums; Dale Hibbert would play bass, Johnny Marr guitar and Morrissey voice. So they recorded these songs on a one inch 16 track Ampex tape. At that time "The Smiths" didn't yet exist, there was no contract with a record company or anything. The recorded songs were later (1984) released (of course different versions) on the first album of The Smiths on Rough Trade. The owner is afraid of possible legal issues if he sold an original master tape, an unreleased master tape, which was acquired legally but remember we are speaking of the Smiths and an unreleased Master Tape. The owner of the licensing rights to the entire Smiths catalogue may believe to be the owner of that master tape, if not the medium itself, the contects at least.
Ah...and as to the 2 guys who retracted their bids, they both were reported to ebay safeharbour because their explanation was "netered wrong amount" but "forgot" to enter the correct amount right after as per ebay rules!!!
One of these teo bidders loves the "bid retraction" activity, he has 6 previous bid retracrtions. He placed bids on three of our auctions and retracted 2 bids only while he is still bidding on one of our Smiths item. Of course he tried to discover the amount of the highest bid, that's why he bid and then retracted.
That's all for now.
Kidn regards to all users on this forum,
Ferdinando