Folder 142
South Korea
South Korea, Oasis Records, 1987 - the deadwax disagrees with the sleeve, and the owner has pinned it anyway. The four-page Korean insert is the one Discogs gives to the standard pressing and denies to the misprint sharing this catalogue number; the run-out, as far as it has been read, is the misprint's string exactly. The owner identifies this copy as the standard pressing, 3972176 -- see the confidence section for what that rests on.
What the record says
Every line below was read off a native-resolution crop of the photo named beside it, except where the source column says otherwise - those rows come from the record itself, by reading it or by playing it, and each says which.
Run-out photographed on both sides across eight frames, and read off the record by eye as well. Both sides are hand-etched, widely spaced and shallow: side one OLE 661 A, side two OLE 661 B. The characters were caught a few at a time across the frames - 661, the side letter - rather than in one continuous shot, which is why the reading off the record matters here.
The deadwax reads against the sleeve here, and it is worth being blunt about it. Discogs records 3972176's run-outs as OLE 661 A K and OLE 661 B K, and 9067383's as OLE 661 A and OLE 661 B. What has been read off this record - no K on either side - is the misprint's string exactly, and the matched release's only in part. That is not a detail to file under “what would close the last gap”: it is a positive match for the candidate the insert rules out.
What keeps it from settling the copy the other way is coverage. These characters are hand-etched, shallow and spread so far round the deadwax that no frame holds a whole string; they were assembled from fragments. A trailing K sitting outside every frame is as consistent with the photographs as an absent one. So the run-out neither confirms 3972176 nor establishes 9067383 - and the grade says so.
Barcode and Other Identifiers: Matrix / Runout
As Discogs records them for release 3972176. Green: in my collection (2 of 2). Red: missing.
| ✓ | Matrix / Runout (Side-A) | OLE 661 A K — this copy |
| ✓ | Matrix / Runout (Side-B) | OLE 661 B K — this copy |
Every line of small print, and the photograph it came from — 15 of them
Front cover: single sleeve, IRON MAIDEN / SOMEWHERE IN TIME
IMG_2911
Rear cover, top right: OLE-661 · (EMC-3512)
IMG_2912, IMG_2913
Rear cover: the tracklist in English, PRODUCED, ENGINEERED AND MIXED BY MARTIN BIRCH
IMG_2912
Insert, four pages, light blue and white: front page IRON MAIDEN / Piece of Mind with the chained-Eddie artwork
IMG_2917
Insert, inner spread: Korean text, the SIDE A / SIDE B tracklists and the member profiles - Position: Lead Vocals, Position: Bass Guitars, Position: Drums, Position: Lead and Rhythm Guitars
IMG_2918, IMG_2919, IMG_2920
Inner bag: clear plastic printed in yellow with Korean text and an OASIS RECORD band
IMG_2921, IMG_2922
Label, side one: OLE-661 · (EMC-3512) · SIDE 1
IMG_2923, IMG_2924
Label, side one: ℗ Apr. 13, 1987 OASIS KOREA · 87-364 (87.3.20) W125gr And Over · 8701—L 297 ~ L 300
IMG_2924
Label, side one, perimeter: EMI · APPROVED BY K.E.C.P.P. MINISTRY OF CULTURE AND INFORMATION REGISTRATION NO 16
IMG_2924
Label, side one, tracklist: 1. CAUGHT SOMEWHERE IN TIME (Harris) 7:22 · 2. WASTED YEARS (Smith) 5:06 · 3. SEA OF MADNESS (Smith) 5:42 · 4. HEAVEN CAN WAIT (Harris) 7:24
IMG_2924
Label, side two: OLE-661 · (EMC-3512) · SIDE 2
IMG_2925, IMG_2926
Run-out, side one, etched: 661 and the side letter A, widely spaced
IMG_2933, IMG_2934
Run-out, side two, etched: the side letter B
IMG_2927, IMG_2928, IMG_2929, IMG_2930
Front cover, helmet and belly: the same colours as folders 138, 141 and 143 side by side - no misprint
IMG_2911
Both run-outs, off the record itself, quoted as written: Side A - OLE 661 A / Side B - OLE 661 B
read by eye by the owner; filed in this folder as runout - eye.txt
The photographs
IMG_2911.jpg1 of 24READ FROM
The object, and what marks it out
Sleeve, labels and inserts
- Single sleeve, the international artwork reprinted locally with
OLE-661 (EMC-3512)set into the top right of the rear. - Four-page insert, light blue and white: the Piece of Mind cover painting on its front page and Korean text inside, with the tracklists and a profile of each member.
- Inner bag - clear plastic printed in yellow with Korean text and an
OASIS RECORDband, not the international printed lyric sleeve. - Labels - the international dark Eddie artwork carrying
OLE-661 (EMC-3512), the Korean release date and the Ministry of Culture and Information approval number around the rim. - Vinyl - black, both sides.
What distinguishes this pressing
- The four-page light blue Korean insert, which Discogs names for this release and denies to the misprint sharing the catalogue number. It is the copy's strongest single detail and it is also the separable one - see the grade.
- No
Kat the end of either run-out, as far as they have been read - which is the misprint's recorded matrix and not this release's. The one thing on the record that cannot have been swapped is the one thing pointing the other way. ℗ Apr. 13, 1987 OASIS KOREAon the labels - a local release date three months after the Greek repress and seven after the UK original.APPROVED BY K.E.C.P.P. MINISTRY OF CULTURE AND INFORMATION REGISTRATION NO 16around the label rim: a state approval mark, and one of the few things on this shelf a European pressing has no equivalent of.87-364 (87.3.20) W125gr And Over- the Korean permit number, its date, and the record's minimum weight, printed on the label.- Track times matching the Greek cut, not the European one.
7:22 / 5:06 / 5:42 / 7:24on side one, where the GEMA/STEMRA labels read7:23 / 5:05 / 5:41 / 7:21.
Eight tracks, two sides, and the recording credits
Side A
- A1Caught Somewhere In Time
- A2Wasted Years
- A3Sea Of Madness
- A4Heaven Can Wait
Side B
- B1The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner
- B2Stranger In A Strange Land
- B3Deja-Vu
- B4Alexander The Great
Bruce Dickinson - vocals · Dave Murray - lead and rhythm guitar, guitar synthesizer · Adrian Smith - lead and rhythm guitar, backing vocals, guitar synthesizer · Steve Harris - bass, bass synth · Nicko McBrain - drums.
Produced, engineered and mixed by Martin Birch. Mastered by George Marino at Sterling Sound. Bass, bass synth and drums recorded at Compass Point Studios, Nassau; guitars, vocals and guitar synth recorded at Wisseloord Studios, Hilversum; mixed at Electric Lady Studios, New York. Sleeve illustration by Derek Riggs; sleeve concept by Derek Riggs and Rod Smallwood. Inner sleeve photograph by Aaron Rapoport. Published by Zomba Music Publishers Ltd.
Personnel and studio credits are sourced from Discogs release 1701390, the UK original, and apply to the recording rather than to this pressing. The producer, publisher and copyright lines are independently corroborated by this copy's own label, quoted above.
Condition, from the photographs
A photograph cannot grade a record - this is a description of what is visible, not a grade.
- Sleeve: general handling wear with some edge and corner softening; no splits or seam separation visible in these shots.
- Vinyl: light surface marks and handling sheen catch the light. No visible deep scratches, warping or edge damage in these photographs. The labels are clean and unmarked.
No Goldmine grade is claimed for it, or any other. I have no record of where this copy came from.
What is settled, and what is not
Settled by the owner on 2026-09-19 -- the closing paragraph of this section says so, and the grade above follows it. What comes first is the photographic case exactly as it stood before that, present tense and all: where it says this copy is Probable rather than Confirmed, that is what the photographs alone support, and it is still true on the photographs alone.
Probable, and the reason it is not Confirmed on the photographs alone is a disagreement rather than a silence.
Three Korean entries sit under this master. One, 5749439, is an unofficial release on High Stereo Light with catalogue J 202, and is not in the running - this record says OLE-661 in four places. That leaves the two Oasis pressings, which share a catalogue number, a label design and a manufacturer, and which Discogs separates on three things: the insert, the cover colours, and the deadwax.
How the other candidates were ruled out
| Candidate | Insert | Cover colours | Run-out on Discogs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3972176 - LP, Album, Stereo | “Includes a 4-page insert featuring ‘Piece of Mind’ cover artwork and a Korean text… some copies with Light Blue/White insert.” This copy has it, light blue and white. | Standard. Matches - set beside the other copies of this artwork in this batch, Eddie's helmet and belly are the ordinary colours. | OLE 661 A K / OLE 661 B K. Partial match only: no K has been read here. |
| 9067383 - Misprint | “No insert”. Contradicted - this copy has one. | “Parts of the helmet and belly have a different color”. Contradicted, as far as a photograph can say. | OLE 661 A / OLE 661 B. Exact match to what has been read here. |
Two of the three rows point at 3972176 and the third points at 9067383, which is why this copy is not Confirmed. A grade of Confirmed wants a discriminator unique among the survivors; what is here is a discriminator that picks one survivor and a second that picks the other.
The insert is the better of the two arguments. It is a printed object that either is or is not in the sleeve, whereas the K is the last character of a hand-etched string that no frame reaches the end of - an absence established from partial coverage, which this shelf has been wrong about before. The colour comparison is softer still: photographs taken under different light are a poor instrument for “a different color” when nothing says which parts or how much.
But the insert has a weakness the deadwax does not. Inserts travel: a copy can lose one or gain one in forty years, and nothing about this sleeve proves the insert was always in it. The deadwax cannot move. So the stronger kind of evidence is the one currently pointing the other way, and calling this Confirmed would mean preferring the separable object to the permanent one on the strength of how well each was photographed.
Standing caveat: this method cannot exclude a pressing absent from Discogs. The version list is incomplete by construction, so a single surviving candidate is a best match, not a proof of uniqueness.
What would settle it, on the photographs alone. One raking-light pass of each full run-out circle, end to end. A K on either side confirms 3972176 and makes the copy Confirmed on that evidence too. No K on a complete circle is the other outcome and a more interesting one: it would put the insert and the deadwax in flat contradiction and make this a mismatched copy - the misprint's record in the standard pressing's sleeve - rather than an uncertain one.
Pinned by the owner, 2026-09-19. Everything above is what the photographs support on their own, and it is left standing unedited. The insert and the deadwax still pull in opposite directions on the photographic evidence alone. On top of that the owner identifies this copy as Discogs 3972176, and the folder is graded on that. It is an owner's judgement, not a new detail in the frames: withdraw it and the case reverts to Probable, for the reasons argued above.