The Vinyl District recently ran a great piece on Bill Daly, owner of the Adams Morgan record store Crooked Beat, and his once-in-a-lifetime find of a "butcher cover" copy of The Beatles' 1966 album Yesterday and Today. The album was originally relesed with a Robert Whitaker shot of John, Paul, Ringo, and George wearing butcher coats and draped in dismembered baby dolls and slabs of meat. Not surprisingly, the image proved controversial--many of the covers were destroyed and others had a more genteel shot of the Fab Four pasted over the offending photo.

An "unpeeled" butcher cover copy of Yesterday and Today--meaning a copy where the newer cover is still pasted over the butcher cover--is one of the biggest finds in the world of record collecting. In fact, copies are such a find that there's a small industry devoted to creating fake, unpeeled copies of Yesterday and Today. Peeled copies can go for around $500; Daly says he has seen an unpeeled copy go for $10,000.

So, is Daly keeping the rare find or cashing in? For now he says he's keeping it.

"They appreciate at about 100 percent a year," Daly says. "Someone already offered me $1000 for it, but I think I'm going to sit on it for a while. I still have vinyl I've had since I was a kid--I still have the first album I bought when I was 8 years old. I'll just add it to the stack. If I ever have to sell it, maybe it'll be when I retire or something."  

As excited as Daly is about the find, he says he's not a major Beatles fan. "I always liked them, but they're not my favorite band or anything," he says.

Daly has thought he'd come across a butcher cover copy of Yesterday and Today a couple of times over the years, but this time all of the telltale clues were clear.  He came across the record, in a bin of old vinyl, and "I thought, why does it look like George Harrison’s head is pasted over?" He peered some more, and saw the tell-tale dark "V" from Ringo's sweater peeking through. "I peeled it up, just a little, and saw a butcher smock. It was kind of crazy. It was a good feeling--I had to sit down for a second."

Daly says the only vinyl nirvana moment he can compare it to is finding a 1961 Buddy Morrow recording for his father 14 years ago. He's already fielding offers from folks who want to buy the cover (he says the album itself is in bad shape, but that the cover is what matters). He has also had one man offer to sell him two unpeeled copies to make available to his customers, and some people have just stopped in to gawk at the thing.

"I've had guys come in and ask how much I'm selling it for, and another guy keeps asking--if I tell him it's for sale, he'll probably fork out whatever," Daly says. "But I'm kind of liking the moment right now, and that I actually found it after years of coming across that record, thinking it was one, looking at it, and then realizing it's not. 

"I've been working in record stores for almost 21 years, I've seen almost everything--I've seen these before but never found one myself. And finally one came across the counter."