Hey!
For over two years now, every now and then I've been after proper information regarding the vinyl pressing of The Jacksons' album "Victory" with the white dove on Randy's shoulder on the cover.
The story behind this, is following: The first copies that were pressed, didn't include the dove on the cover. As the production ran, The Jacksons came up with the idea of white doves being released at the start of every show during the Victory Tour. The production was put on hold and cover painter Michael Whelan was asked to add the dove onto Randy's shoulder. The new cover as used and went into production. While planning the tour, the idea of having doves fly at the start of every show proved to be very difficult. So, production was put on hold, the dove cover got removed and the first version of the cover was used again.
However, the dove cover was used for the picture disc format of the Victory album — 20,000 copies of the picture disc were pressed, only in the US and in Canada.
As for the dove version of the standard format of the album, no one really knows how many copies were pressed or how many are still out there. One thing is for sure: The pressings including the white dove are not as rare as people think and not that much worth.
The reason? It's simple. First of all, note that the dove cover was only printed on copies manufactured in The Netherlands / Holland. What proves my point is that there's two different releases of the dove version, each with a different catalog number.
One is the original release that I mentioned in the story above. This version was pressed in 1984, the original release year of the album.
It has the catalog number EPC 86303 and the dark blue Epic label.
The other one is what seems to be a re-issue that must've been released some time after 1986, because in that year Epic redesigned and changed their label to a light grey one.
You can see, this release has a whole different catalog number, too, which is EPC 450450 1.
Some of those later re-issues also come with a "NICE PRICE FROM CBS" sticker.
As you can see, it's not that difficult to find a pressing that has the white dove on Randy's shoulder. I, personally, would spend $60 at most for the EPC 86303, simply because it's from that 1984 production that didn't run for long. As for the re-issue (EPC 450450 1), I wouldn't spend more than $5-$10. I once found and bought one for $12 on eBay, but re-sold it after I found out it's a re-issue. For those interested in buying the picture disc, I'd say $20-$30 is a fair price.
There are some sellers on various websites trying to sell their dove copies for over $100. This is really much too much, and if you want my advice, don't go for it. You'll eventually find a copy for a lot less, just keep looking.
