Holy moly, a new record collector's holy grail has surfaced: a one-off UK copy of Darrell Banks' "Open the Door to Your Heart" b/w "Our Love (Is In The Pocket)" on the English London label. GAH!! This single isn't unknown; it's actually an affordable, well-loved, and an often played classic which also charted in the US just shy of the Top 20. Clean original American copies, on Revilot, only rate about ten bucks. The hubub is 'cause an existing London issue of the 45 was only legend until someone in the UK turned up the ONLY known copy. Hence, BIG DEAL to record nerds. The legal UK issue was on Stateside, and it's only slightly less common than the US. Right, details via The Guardian:

...when someone casually mentioned on the Soulsource messageboard a couple of weeks ago that he had a finished London copy of "Open the Door to Your Heart," eyes rolled. It was only when the owner, one Nick W, posted scans of the single that people got very excited indeed. It seems to have originally belonged to someone who worked at the pressing plant. Smith surmises that “this guy must have half-inched one from the factory the day it was pressed, gone back to work the next day and found out they'd trashed the lot.” London presumably melted down the copies they'd pressed before the single came out on Stateside a few weeks later. Just the one copy snuck out.

It's believed, "conservatively," this 45 is worth at least £10,000, but in the world of obsessive (soul) record collectors who knows what this 45 could rate at auction. The original holy grail is was Motown staff producer Frank Wilson's "Do I Love You." The last time a copy of the "Do I Love You" sold at auction it sold for just under £27,000 and there are, perhaps, five known copies of the Wilson 45. Oof...and just the other day I asked "what was the most money you kind folks of Slog Out™ had ever paid for a record?"