Sex Pistols — Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols: How to Identify a First Pressing

• Other: In March 1977, the Sex Pistols were on the verge of completing a contract with A&M Records and had begun recording at Wessex Sound Studios; but just days later, A&M terminated the contract on March 16 and destroyed the several thousand copies of the 'God Save the Queen' single that had already been pressed — this extremely rare A&M pressing is key background for identifying an 'ultra-early, never officially released' copy.
• Cover: The UK sleeve was designed by Jamie Reid, deliberately avoiding any photo of the band, using fluorescent orange-red and yellow as the main colours, with cut-and-paste lettering imitating a crude screen-printed texture.
• Cover: A known batch of roughly 10,000 Virgin first-pressing sleeves has a printing error: the sleeve lists only 11 tracks, but the record itself actually contains 12 — an important tracklist/actual-track-count mismatch for identifying an early batch.

• The album has been reissued many times: a double CD paired with the bootleg compilation 'Spunk' in 1996; a 30th-anniversary vinyl edition in 2007; a four-disc deluxe box set in 2012; and a limited picture-disc edition for Record Store Day in 2015 — all of these can be clearly distinguished from the 1977 Virgin original vinyl.

• UK fluorescent orange-yellow cover vs. US pink-green cover: Both designed by Jamie Reid, the UK Virgin edition uses fluorescent orange-red/yellow colouring, while the US edition switches to a pink background with a green Sex Pistols logo — the most direct visual clue for telling the two regional editions apart.
• 11-track sleeve / 12-track record misprint: Roughly 10,000 Virgin first-pressing sleeves have a tracklist printing error, listing only 11 tracks while the record actually contains 12 — a printing-error variant within an officially released batch, not a bootleg.

discogs.com returned a 403 this time and could not be accessed; the English Wikipedia entry was used instead. One clarification is needed: the brief A&M release event concerned the single 'God Save the Queen', not the album itself; the album proper was officially released by Virgin Records on October 28, 1977. Exactly how to identify the specific Virgin original first-pressing catalog number/label could not be verified this time.

• 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.