While we're waiting for the announcement of the new remastered mono Beatles vinyl albums, I thought I'd reminisc about the original vinyl mono boxed sets.
The original 10 album vinyl mono box sets were produced between 1982 and 1986 in the UK. The black boxes were intended for export markets (primarily the USA) and the boxes were numbered to 1,000. The red boxes were intended for domestic (UK) sales.
These red boxes were not numbered. Both boxes were for sale here in Norway. It is rumoured that the total number of boxes (inclusive of red and black sets) was 10,000. The black boxes sent to the USA quickly became scarce with demand still high; so the red un-numbered box sets, originally intended solely for the UK market was exported to the USA. Since stereo was the preferred format in the seventies, the mono versions of the albums slowly sold out and were all out of stock from EMI's storage shelves but they were still somewhat in demand by Beatles collectors, because of the small changes in the mixes. Thus, the ten mono Beatles albums were repressed in 1982. The records themselves were new pressings on lighter vinyl than the original sixties pressings.
The albums included were: PLEASE PLEASE ME, WITH THE BEATLES, A HARDS DAY'S NIGHT, BEATLES FOR SALE, HELP!, RUBBER SOUL, REVOLVER, SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND, THE BEATLES (AKA WHITE ALBUM) and YELLOW SUBMARINE. The mono "A COLLECTION OF BEATLES OLDIES" was not repressed in 1982.
What was different about these LPs from their sixties counterparts were the labels (from "Please Please Me" to "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was a retro-variation of the Yellow and Black labels from the '60s; while "The Beatles" and "Yellow Submarine" were on Apple labels, which were also slightly varied from their original label. Also, the sleeves did not have the front cover flaps glued to the back, like they had in the sixties - but this was also the case for the stereo albums.
The 1982 mono boxed sets are now very sought after collector's items and command high prices.