Do you experts have an opinion on the ebay item 120508869759 item station to station slick?
If its genuine would it be more valuable or collectable as a slick only and not mounted and packaged?
Is it in your opinion authentic?
I also wonder why such an item would need to offered with "extras"
Any thoughts on this much discussed collectable?

*edit by Maarten - changed the title to be more descriptive*

this one's a bit of a mess. the slick may well be genuine, but its value has definitely been decreased by it being cropped and stuck to a blank cover, although the shrink-wrapping wasn't a bad idea as it should have helped preserve the colours. the back cover looks bad with all that staining, looks like it's been glued to something. the other items are not "mint" however, not sure why sellers insist on over-grading so blatantly. they're mint if you don't include the glue and tape stains on the back.

but these bonus extras actually add weight to the claim that it's real IMHO, so they act as a form of provenance. anyone who knows michael olsen should be able to identify him from the pic too.

the claim that only four survived is surely open to question... so its value is hard to determine. the regular uncropped slick is valued around £300-500, but have been offered for considerably more. at the other end of the price spectrum, what i believe to be a genuine one sold for $50 in 2006! see here: http://www.popsike.com/David-Bowie-STAT ... 88050.html

(the supposed alternate version with white text sold recently was the same as the above but without the fifth colour red being overprinted)

What is odd about this one is that it has the red "contains the hit single Golden Years" on it, which I don't think I have seen on a colour STS cover before. It did appear in a couple of different forms on the B/W US cover (and is not a sticker, but actually printed, IIRC).

the description states that the slick was glued to a blank sleeve then shrink-wrapped and stickered at the pressing plant... all pics with that "sticker" have it in the same spot so it probably was printed as you say... i'd describe this one as a custom-made version, a one-off. the slick it's made from is probably genuine.

I'm with Shooky on this one. Probably genuine, but significantly devalued by it's condition.

Interesting comments, i note it never met the reserve price.
Thanks for your thoughts

Hello everyone and Happy New Year!, been lurking here for awhile, I was the lucky one who bought the slick for $ 50 in 2006! it was so badly stained with oil I could not display it, (as you can tell on the scan) also I thought it was a boot because the image was sligthy larger , 13" instead of 12", I sold it again on eBay a few months later for the same price or little more.

interesting... when you say 13" do you recall whether that was the outer dimensions of the cover image or the crop area? print requires a bleed area outside the crop size as cutting is not accurate enough to risk cutting exactly on the image edge.

the actual image was at least 13", you couldn't have it wrapped around an LP for a makeshift cover, the spine wouldn't match either.

appreciate the info. i'm buying what i believe to be a genuine slick in a few months and i'll be sure to measure it.

Do we know how many slicks have surfaced over the years
Or indeed how many were produced? (or counterfeited)?

that's the big question of course... according to michael olsen who is supposedly the source of the US slicks, only four complete copies exist, plus some progressives (sheets with one, two, three and four colours using the CMYK process) with missing colours. if ragazzosolo's $50 buy was a fake then it's possible olsen's claim is true. copies on popsike are either the UK version (a folded 24" x 12" mock up that was provided with a test pressing for review purposes), or counterfeits of it, or they are cut and folded US proofs. if they are all genuine then olsen's figure is clearly wrong or they are the same sleeves being resold. safe to say that the figure is very low in any case if less than a dozen authenticated cases have appeared in 33 years.

Interesting, Olsen says only Four were produced in full coulor but it is mentioned in JL's Blog that Six were owned by him.

six colour of six in total? could have been referring to progressives. it's a tough one to prove, it really is.

Definatley six full coulor ones are mentioned.
Also, Olsen surley must have known that by packaging it, that it would devalue it.