A Record Collector's Guide

Nirvana

Incesticide

Incesticide was awesome: a true goldmine for Nirvana fans. Those of us who were a little more thorough than others had gotten ahold of a chunk of these tracks long before they were released. Some were singles, some b-sides, some had circulated on demo bootlegs. There were definitely tracks I had not gotten before Incesticide came out, and of course, they sounded infinitely better on this than they had on the bootlegs.

There were lots of versions of this one, but now that I've tackled Nevermind, everything else is comparatively easy.

There have somehow only been 17 legitimate vinyl variants over the years. I can handle that. The first to discuss, and still the main one to own, was the original U.S. pressing, issued on a light blue marble vinyl. They made 15,000 of these. It has been a little pricey for a while, but had really been appreciating recently. There have been four of them that have gone in the $225-250 range so far in 2020. I still can't call that the norm, as others have gone for less. Seems to be heading in that direction, though.

Next, we'll look at the other versions that came out in 1992. All of these were on black vinyl. There were two Dutch variants, made for the general Europe market: one had labels with the standard Geffen Records logo and misspelled "Aero Zeppelin" as "Abro Zeppelin" on the b-side label. The other had weird labels, which had the same logo, but no "Geffen Records" underneath it. This one had "Aero Zeppelin" spelled correctly on the label. The second of these seems a bit rarer and slightly more expensive, but both are relatively reasonable. The French pressing is pretty rare and getting expensive. The Brazilian pressing is fairly common and not costly, while the Ecuadorian pressing is very rare and rather steep.

The next few years brought a few additional pressings. There was a Colombian one, which is fairly common and not too expensive. The Venezuelan one is quite rare, but has never sold for all that much. A South Korean version came out around this time as well, which is fairly rare and pricey. The Japanese pressing wasn't worth anything for years, but there has been renewed interest in the Japanese issues, so it has appreciated quite a bit in recent years. All of the above were on balck vinyl.

The real wave of re-presses started in 2011. There were ORG versions that came out at that point. As with Nevermind, these were mastered from the original tapes by Bernie Grundman and were pressed at Pallas, and many swear by them as the versions with the definitive sound quality. There was a clear vinyl version and a black vinyl version. Both have gotten quite expensive lately.

In 2012, the anniversary pressings began. A 200g double LP version (no extra tracks - it was just recorded at 45 RPM) came out for Record Store Day Black Friday. It was numbered, and in theory, there were 4,000 copies, but numbers higher than 4,000 have surfaced. The general consensus is this one sounds really good. It's not the cheapest, but the price is actually not much different from the retail price when it was released. There was also a 180g European version. That one is a lot cheaper. Both were re-pressed in 2017 for the 25th anniversary, with very subtle differences. For the U.S. version, the 2012 issue had a round, orange sticker on the front of the sleeve giving all the details about the release. Also, as noted above, the 2012 one was numbered - the number was stamped in gold on the back of the sleeve. The 2017 version did not have the sticker or the number. For the European version, the main difference seems to be the latter one came with a rectangular, black hype sticker. There were also two versions of the 2017 pressing sleeve. One listed the track "Beeswax" on the wrong record (listed on side C, actually on side B). A corrected version also exists. All of the 2017 versions are reasonably priced.

U.S. Light Blue Marble

ORG Clear

This page was last updated on May 12, 2020.