The YARDBIRDS WHAT DO YOU WANT Polish Postcard single record Very Rare. size 4" x 5.5"
I have never played these postcards and they look unplayed.
Buy one postcard and get free shipping on each additional card purchased at the same time.
Although the so-called Polish Postcard singles are widely considered an
aspect of flexidisc collecting, the sheer range and novelty of
available issues has established them as a firm, if difficult, theme in
their own right.
Little firm data has been published surrounding these exotic issues’
origins and development. The majority were produced by the Polpress
label and are sometimes inaccurately described as pirate productions,
in that the music was not licensed from the western copyright holders.
However, as one of the few rock-music media readily available to Polish
youth during the Communist era, their status as items of social history
necessarily outweighs any legal issues.
Polish Postcard records seem to date back to the 1960s, when Mary
Hopkin’s “Bylie Taki Dni” (“Those Were The Days”) was paired with the
Ohio Express’ untranslatable “Yummy Yummy Yummy” for an issue much
sought after by Apple label collectors. Other known issues from this
early period include Procol Harum, The Doors and Pink Floyd.
Many of the discs (which are, of course, shaped and manufactured to the
specifications of a regular picture postcard, then embossed with two
musical tracks) frequently bear images completely unrelated to their
subject — cartoons, street scenes, greetings and so forth. It also
appears that “new” postcards were not always produced; many postcard
singles exist pressed onto cards which clearly predate the song’s
recording — a 1920s view of Warsaw, for example, playing a 1970s Deep
Purple song.
Neither was Poland the only Communist bloc nation issuing music in this
form. The Soviet Union itself saw a number of postcard singles issued
by the Moscow Photo/Cinema Organization during the late 1960s,
measuring some 9½" across and playing at 78 rpm. These cards, too, tend
to offer totally unrelated images on the postcard side.
Another characteristic of these issues is their extremely limited
availability. Some press runs were as tiny as 50 copies. One should
also be aware that automatic record players — that is, those whose
mechanism automatically returns the playing arm to its rest upon
reaching the end of the record — are unable to play them, as the
postcard record begins where a conventional 45’s label would lie.
Entire LPs were produced in the postcard medium, two songs per card.
For obvious reasons, complete sets are extremely rare and highly valued
today, particularly those still contained within their own original
packaging. Many cards, individual and otherwise, were issued in
“picture sleeve” envelopes or wrappers, bearing the artist and song
title. Several Pink Floyd titles are known in this format, including
the albums
Dark Side Of The Moon and
Meddle, and a unique compilation,
Super Floyd. (Pink Floyd themselves utilized the wrapper format as packaging for the set of non-musical postcards included within their
Shine On box set. )
Polish postcard releases, while actively traded, are nevertheless
extremely difficult to find. Many collectors might spend their entire
lives without ever finding one through their traditional record-hunting
channels. However, shift one’s focus away from record collecting and
into the realms of cartophily (postcard collecting) and some finds can
be made. Many card dealers have sections of novelty and musical
postcards, and while these tend to be dominated by mass-produced
American issues, playing state anthems and songs for tourists and the
like, more esoteric items abound.