A Record Collector's Guide

Nirvana

In Utero

This is a fabulous album. Part of me will always wonder what would have come next. The reality is, if Kurt had survived, my guess is his music would have mellowed quite a bit from this point. There were enough indicators. But still...it's fun to imagine. There were a whole bunch of variants. Nowhere close to the quantity of Nevermind variants, but still a lot. We have 24 legitimate vinyl variants (so far). The original U.S. pressing was on clear vinyl. As with the original pressing of Incesticide, this one was limited to 15,000 copies. The price remained stable for a lot of years, but it's become expensive.

Also similar to Incesticide, there were two variants of the original European issue. It was a Dutch pressing, made for general European consumption. Both were on black vinyl. The first had labels with the Geffen logo on them, with "GEFFEN RECORDS" underneath. The second variant has the logo with no words. That one seems to be much less common. Both are a mid-range expensive.

Vinyl variants came out in six more countries in 1993. Most are in the same general price range, but there are a couple of outliers. As with the preceding albums, the France and Ecuador pressings are rare and pretty expensive. The Spain, Brazil, and Colombia pressings are all fairly easy to find and not too steep. The South Korea pressing is a little more expensive than those, but cheaper than the France and Ecuador ones. All of the above were on black vinyl.

A Japanese pressing came out in 1996. The sleeve had a purple obi strip. The value of this one remained stables for years, but has been headed upward in the past few years. It's not cheap now. In 1998, a Simply Vinyl pressing came out in the UK. This one is common and inexpensive.

2003 brought us a very interesting pressing. It was on black vinyl and came out in the UK. As the story goes, they unintentionally used the original Albini mix of the album, which had originally been rejected by the label. The legend of this one grew for a while, and the price grew with it. However, once the 2013 deluxe editions came out, which included the Albini mixes as bonus tracks, the allure of this pressing waned and the value went with it.

There was a black vinyl Canadian version that came out in 2003 as well - it is cheap and readily available. The 2007 one doesn't sit well with me. Everywhere I've read about it has treated it as an official pressing, but it just feels like a fake to me. It was a UK pressing on Polydor. Really? Polydor? Every pressing of every major label Nirvana album in Europe was on Geffen. And suddenly this random UK issue comes out on Polydor? I don't buy it, but I'm including it for now, until I have conclusive evidence to back my suspicion. Anyway, it's common and not costly.

The first Back to Black pressing came out in 2008 - it's easy to find and one of the least expensive of all variants. Then came the ORG pressings in 2009. There was a version of that one that was pressed at RTI and one pressed at Pallas, and there were color vinyl versions of both. The two color vinyl variants were different colors: the RTI one was on yellow cream marble vinyl and the Pallas one was on clear neon yellow. All of these have become expensive due to the reputations of the ORG pressings. The only one of the four that is cheaper is the black vinyl RTI pressing.

In 2013, we got the 20th anniversary deluxe (and super deluxe) versions. Lots of fun bonus tracks: new 2013 mixes, the original Albini mixes, the elusive Scott Litt mix of Pennyroyal Tea from that scarce single, and a couple of other unreleased tracks. This was released as a 45 RPM, 180g triple LP. Then, for Record Store Day Black Friday that year, a separate double LP version was released, again in the U.S. and Europe. This one was also a 45 RPM, 180g pressing, but it just contained the 2013 mixes of the album. It also had a cool take on the artwork (the one with the black background above). Both versions of that one are inexpensive and common.

Wrapping things up, we had another European Back to Black pressing in 2015. That one is super-cheap and very common, as all the Back to Black ones seem to be these days.

U.S. Clear	2003 UK Albini Mix	ORG Yellow Cream Marble
ORG Neon Yellow	2013 U.S. 2xLP - Disc 1

This page was last updated on May 12, 2020.