7" of the month club

I guess you could call the 7" of the Month Club set released by NOFX as the first set of records I ever chased, my first white whale. The real hook for me on this was the cover art, specifically the back cover art. A 12 piece puzzle making one larger piece of artwork is a pretty cool idea, and I was totally onboard for the set.

Originally the club ran from 2005-2006, and the 3000 original pressings were all gone a few months before the club finished it's run of 12. So began the long and arduous task of tracking down each record individually on ebay.

I'd picked up 3 or 4 when a whole set in supposedly "perfect condition" came up, and I was foaming at the mouth. Ended up dropping a stupid sum on them, and it was all downhill from there.

The records eventually arrived - damaged - and I couldn't be sure the damage was caused by the poor packing job the seller did or because the seller had misrepresented the quality on the auction. A lot of back and forth happened and I eventually got both my money back and a valuable lesson not to deal with teenagers on important matters like collectable vinyl.

During the time I was fighting with this kid for a refund I'd managed to track down the remaining 7"s I was missing and had 2 complete sets for a short time. I guess the final joke is on that kid - I swapped out a couple of the best looking discs and sleeves with my slightly damaged copies and sent him the rest.

Merry christmas you little shit.

All in all, however, I'm really happy with finally polishing off this set. Some of the songs are a bit shitty but the package is well put together and it's cohesive. The little running joke scribed into the matrix of each disc is a clever idea too. The picture disc for number 12 is a bit tacky but I guess NOFX are a bit tacky too. Speaking of, I forgot to take pictures of it somehow, so the 12th is just the ebay pic. Sue me.