Promos and cut-outs
Promo records and white labels:
what they're worth.
Record companies gave away copies of nearly every album to radio stations, reviewers and record stores. Those copies carry marks: a white label, a stamp on the jacket, a strip of song times across the cover, sometimes a clipped corner. A few promos sell for many times a store copy. Most sell for about the same. Which mark you have decides which group your record is in.
01
The marks that make a promo
Goldmine lists five common signs. Most promos carry one or two of them.
A white label. A special label printed only for promo copies, usually white, with wording such as “Demonstration – Not For Sale,” “Promotional Copy” or “Sample Copy – Not For Sale.” These discs were usually pressed before the store copies so they could reach radio ahead of the release date.
Label text on a regular label. Some companies kept their normal label and added “Promotional Copy” or “D.J. Copy” to it.
A stamp or sticker on the jacket. A rubber stamp, a sticker, or a gold foil stamp reading “Promotional – Not For Sale” on a stock jacket. Gold foil stamps turn up mostly on late-1970s and 1980s albums.
A timing strip. A paper band across the front cover listing the songs and their running times, for the DJ.
A hole or a cut. A punched hole, a drill hole, a clipped corner, or the word “Free” punched through the cover. In the 1960s and 1970s Capitol skipped white labels and marked stock copies this way. These same marks also mean cut-out, which is covered below.
02
A promo next to a store copy
Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run (Columbia PC 33795, 1975) shows the usual gap. Recent Discogs sales:
| Copy | How to spot it | Median |
|---|---|---|
| Stock first pressing | Terre Haute pressing, “John” Landau typo on the back cover | $14 |
| White label promo | “Demonstration Not For Sale” label, timing strip, cut corner | $37–50 |
| Advance “script cover” promo | Sepia cover with script lettering, “Advance Promotional” label | $1,009 |
Source: Discogs release-page sales statistics, October 2026.
The white label promo is worth about three times the store copy, which is a typical premium. The script-cover advance is a different record: a cover that was never sold in stores, mailed out before release in a special envelope. One copy has sold for $5,500.
A jacket stamp alone is worth much less. Goldmine calls a stock copy with “Demonstration – Not for Sale” rubber-stamped on it a “designate promo” and says to treat it as a stock copy that has been defaced.
03
When a promo is worth real money
Goldmine's price guide documents only the promos that differ from the store copy: colored vinyl promos, promo-only catalog series (Columbia AS, Warner Bros. PRO-A, Capitol SPRO, Mercury MK), promos with a different cover or different music, and 1980s promos on special high-quality vinyl.
The best-known case is the mono radio promo. Stores stopped selling mono LPs in the US around 1968, but labels kept sending mono copies to AM stations. Led Zeppelin II (Atlantic 8236, 1969) went out as a white label disc in a stereo jacket with a sticker reading “Promotional D/J Copy Monoaural CSG Process Not For Sale.” It sells for a median of $550 on Discogs, with a high of $2,499.99.
04
Cut-outs look like promos, but aren't
A cut-out is an unsold record the company took back from stores and sold off cheap. To stop it being returned again at full credit, the jacket was marked: a clipped corner, a drilled or punched hole, or a saw notch in the spine. Singles were drilled through the label or stamped “C.O.” These copies filled the bargain bins.
Labels also used the same cuts on promos, for the same reason. Most white label promos of Born to Run have a cut corner. So look inside. A promo label or promo wording on the disc means promo. A regular store label inside a cut jacket means cut-out.
A cut-out costs you on the cover grade. Goldmine's standard: a jacket with a cut-out marking can be VG+ at best, never Near Mint. The record inside is unaffected, and it sounds the same as any other copy from that pressing.
05
Checking a promo you own
Look at the label first, then the front and back of the jacket. Note every mark. Then find the exact promo version on Discogs, not the store version, since the two sell for different money. Grade both the disc and the jacket the usual way; our grading guide covers the scale.
Crown Vinyl identifies the pressing from the barcode or photos of the sleeve, grades condition from photos on the Goldmine scale, and estimates value from recent real sales.
A few questions
The ones that come up.
Promo records are bought and sold openly on Discogs, eBay and in record shops. The wording was there to keep stores from returning free copies for credit. Recalls of promos were rare and not enforced.
No. A test pressing was made before the main run so the label and artist could check the sound, in much smaller numbers. White label promos were pressed for radio and reviewers, often in the hundreds or thousands. Both can say 'not for sale', so read the label wording and check the exact version on Discogs.
It lowers the jacket grade. Goldmine's standard says a cover with a cut-out marking can never be Near Mint; VG+ is the ceiling. The disc is unaffected. On a promo that left the label already cut, collectors expect the mark and it hurts the price less.
It marks a stock copy given away as a promo, usually to stores or radio in the late 1970s and 1980s. Goldmine treats a stamped stock copy as a 'designate promo' and values it like a stock copy that has been defaced. The disc inside is a regular store pressing.
Label, jacket, value
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