Nice timing by Michel Veenstra, in his Groningen antique and curio shop Klinkhamer. Right before the opening of the large Rolling Stones exhibition Unzipped in the Groninger Museum, he comes up with a unique Stones cover.
It is a deformed cover of the double LP Exile on Main St. ( St. to pronounce as Street ), complete with content. Something went wrong while printing. Shifted plates or something. You are truly seeing double. “It made me dizzy at first,” says Veenstra. The strange effect is enhanced by the fact that the cover is composed of countless small photos, with the title loosely chalked in red over it.
The inside turns out to be ‘wrong’ when unfolded
Veenstra soon suspected that such a misprint could be worth something. And so good trade. After all, failed stamps, without jagged edges, sometimes also want to yield a fortune. So he didn’t hesitate for a second when he was able to take over the record, along with a bunch of other LPs, from a friend who also acts.
But what on earth is something like that supposed to achieve? Veenstra: ,,Really no idea. I searched the internet, but couldn’t find any comparison material. It’s going to be whatever the madman gives.” There is no price sticker on that record. If you look at the cover for a long time, it takes on something of a 3D trick. Once unfolded, the inside appears to be ‘wrong’ for a while. And then we’re talking about this too Exile on Main St ., cited by many Rolling Stones enthusiasts as their favorite record.
Nothing online, just in the store
Selling by auction via the internet would of course have been a possibility. “But yes, does something like this have to be done via the internet? It certainly draws attention, but I don’t like it. We have a physical store here for a reason.” That store, brimming with everything, much protected by display cabinets, is located in the Folkingestraat. A stone’s throw from the Groninger Museum. There goes Unzipped in the resit, after corona seriously hindered an earlier attempt.
Shrewdly, Veenstra waited to tell the story about his cover and to put it up for sale (and to inform the newspaper) until just before the opening of the exhibition. “I’ve had him for three months now. But you know that from now on tens of thousands of Stones fans will come to Groningen from all corners and holes. There are probably some fanatical collectors among them.”
He’s not going to the first one
Maybe that one Belgian collector will pop in again. Veenstra: ,,He has a beautiful Stones collection, some of which is in the exhibition. Last time he came to us to buy some LPs and singles.” Such a person could belong to the ‘crazy’ group, who would give no idea what for it. But this cover-with-record will not go to the first interested person anyway. The bidding beckons.
And so the Stones not only have an eventful past, but also an eventful cover. Veenstra: “He would actually fit right into the exhibition, don’t you think?”
There’s quite a bit in that.