Daft Punk — Discovery: How to Identify a First Pressing

• Cover: The standard edition's cover has a black background with the words 'Daft Punk' rendered in a liquid-metal texture.
• Other: Released by Virgin Records on March 12, 2001 — the time baseline for confirming whether a copy is from the original first release batch.
• Label: The label is Virgin Records; the specific vinyl label-artwork design could not be found described verbatim in any accessible source this time and is honestly marked as unverified.

• To mark the 20th anniversary of the companion animated film 'Interstella 5555', Daft Punk reissued 'Discovery' with Japanese-edition artwork, along with special material such as stickers and a Daft Club membership card — clearly distinct from the 2001 original standard vinyl.

discogs.com returned a 403 this time and could not be accessed; the English Wikipedia entry was used instead. That entry records very limited manufacturing-level detail, such as the catalog number and label design, for this album's original vinyl release. The album also reached No. 12 on the Billboard vinyl albums chart in 2013, though this has no direct bearing on 'first-pressing identification'. Because this album was released relatively recently (2001), the traditional kind of 'first-pressing identification' — label evolution, hand-etched matrix numbers, etc. — also draws less attention in the collecting market than it does for the older albums in this list, and this is honestly noted here.

• Read the runout (the smooth area between the last groove and the label) with the disc tilted under a lamp: matrix numbers, stamper codes and mastering initials are the strongest evidence.
• Label details change between pressing plants and years: rim text, logo style, address, "Manufactured by" wording.
• Cover printing shows the plant and era: printer credit, catalog number position, barcode presence.
• Match all three. A first-press disc in a later cover, or the reverse, is common.

Shoot the label straight on in even light, then the runout with the disc tilted so the etched text catches the light (a phone torch from the side works). Add the front and back cover, the spine, and any inner sleeve or insert. The app reads the label and cover; the runout photo is what confirms the pressing.