This week saw another Top of the Pops album fetch a surprisingly high price on Ebay. The LP in question this time was a copy of the annual Best-of for 1981, incidentally the last one to appear during the album series' life. The funny thing is, the album itself is not too hard to find - the attraction of this particular lot was the inclusion of the original poster/calendar, as shown in the photo above.
This album must have sold in fairly small quantities, as the series was winding down and sales were dwindling. Plus, there is evidence that, contrary to what one might have expected, the annual review LPs - packed with hit songs - sold in smaller numbers than the main LPs. This is shown clearly in the chart stats: while these LPs were apperaing in the main charts, budget charts, NME charts etc, the Best-ofs always performed much weaker than the regular album releases.
How many of these LPs survive, with the original poster still intact? Clearly not too many. With a winning bid of a round £64, that's one impressive calendar, and an extremely hard to fill space finally cracked for the lucky winner.
Someone's got a lot of spare cash to play with lol. A couple of years ago I bought a mint copy of the Best Of TOTP 1975 complete with calendar. I only paid 10p...... :-)
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