[78-L] Durium Hit of the Week 'Hoard'

[Michael Biel]

From: Hans en Corrie Koert
> All Hit of the week sleeves you are talking about are to be
> found at my free online Durium Discography: http://durium.opweb.nl 
> select Hit of the week. ( http://durium.opweb.nl/how.htm) 

I had't gone to your site recently and didn't realize you now had so
many of the sleeves pictured.  Even though you identify each as "cover",
the trimming of the scans makes it difficult to realize these are
sleeves rather than newspaper ads or posters.

> The first series of Durium Records didn't had sleeves -  they
> were sold in displays, to be standing in the news stand.
> You can find one here:
> http://durium.opweb.nl/images/duriumhow/display.jpg

Any pictures of this display in use in a newsstand?  I guess they could
continue to use this when the sleeved discs arrived except that the
label hole would be meaningless.  But this display being cardboard makes
me wonder how long it would last, or if they gave new ones when needed.
 
> The Hit of the week Library, as it was called, was a possibility
> to update your Hit of the week collection, if you had missed copies.
> . . .  If you wanted to up date your collection you could obtain
> them as 10 for 1 dollar by sending a part of the envelope (= cover)
> with your address ( and the money I guess) to the dealer. 

I would think it would be sent to the company like backdated magazines
would also be obtained from the publisher.  But where were the
instructions?  Was there an inserted coupon?

> Mind that 350,000 copies a week were made and sold "for one week" -
> so they had a great stock of unsold hit of the weeks. They even
> sent ships full of these records to Europe to sell here, some
> months later then in the States. I found one picture of a news
> paper stand in ............. Sweden selling Veckans skiva
> ( = which is the Hit of the week):
> http://hitoftheweek.blogspot.com/2007/01/duriumskivan.html

Actually this isn't a newspaper stand, it is a woman standing in the
street with a display on a string around her neck like a cigarette girl
in a nightclub of that era.  That was something special.  I'm looking
for an ordinary picture that has a newsstand in it selling the records
along with newspapers, magazines, and other such things.  I've never
seen one, and whether it was common or unusual would be an indication of
how easily people could get the records.  Did they have to hunt for them
or were they everywhere?  

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com