Hi all

New to the forum, not so much a fan (do like some of his material though), but more after some advice. I have a Gold Disc that was presented to Bryan Ferry for the album Bete Noire. I won it in a school raffle around 1988-89, and was wondering what an item like this is worth these days. We did get in valued back in the 80's and it was said to be worth around £500, but obviously with the explosion of the internet have items such as this increased or decreased in value ? I'm not planning to sell, but it has been on the wall of my office for years, and curiosity is getting the better of me.

The plague has wrote on:

Presented to Bryan Ferry
to commemorate the sale of
over 50,000 units of the REPRISE Album
"Bete Noire", January 1988.

It also has inscribed "Masterdisk" on the inside edge of the album.

Tomcat, you have a private message via this site.

J.O'B.

Interesting item. Looks like a Canadian award - note 'WEA Music of Canada Ltd', bottom right of award. Also US gold disks are awarded for 500,000 sales not 50,000.

Not that there were none, but I had not been aware of any specific Canadian sales awards before, so particularly interesting to me - not because I am Canadian, but I am interested in sales awards/figures in general! I wonder whether Bete Noir success was partly, like in US, off the back of Kiss & Tell? I believe that although BN did not chart high in US, it had one of the longest chart runs there for a Ferry album.

The disc is a 12" LP sized disc.



I thought the value would probably have fallen over the years, as you can get the replica discs on the web. I have no plans in selling the disc as, like you say they look quite smart, and it is a bit unusual as it is a genuine disc.



It certainly looks like a Canadian issue, not just because of the plague, but the label on the record has the catalogue number 9255981 on it, which corresponds with the catalogue number of the LP in Canada. I have done some searching on Music Canada and the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) website, but neither has it listed, although the CRIA website only has archives from 2001.

As mentioned I won the disc in a school raffle. Bryan Ferry was an ex-pupil at my school (not while I was there) in Washington (was in Co Durham), and I believe it had been arranged for him to attend an end of year Festival Week (I think thats what they called it) but he had to cancel, so he donated the disc for the big raffle.

He did something similar when his boyhood cycling club (at Houghton-le-Spring, Co. Durham) contacted him, he donated a gold disc of Manifesto.