RCA Reissue 45s - Late 70s/Early 80s. [OT

Off topic, but I bet someone on this forum can help.

In the late 70’s/early 80’s, RCA stocked reissue 45’s in record stores,
shrink wrapped on a yellow card stock that was slightly larger than the
record, with red lettering on it. Was this part of their Gold Standard
series…or was it it’s own separate campaign? For some reason I seem
to remember it as being called something else - “Chartbuster” or
something similar.

As a life long record/CD collector, I have none of these in my collection
- probably because I always bought the singles when they were
new/first out.

ChicagoBill: I believe you’re probably right about it being a repackage
from a jobber. (I never thought about that - because they were always
RCA titles). And, I WAS buying from Musicland. Thanks for the reply
and the tip.

My work area in the promotions office at the Minneapolis Heilicher Brothers/Pickwick Distribution/Musicland headquarters building was adjacent to the catalog 45s stacks, from which orders were fulfilled for Musicland, Target, Zayre and dozens of other national and local accounts, including rack jobbers.

None of the Musicland stores carried catalog title 45s shrink-wrapped in yellow cards. Those were definitely repackaged by rack jobbers, as ChicagoBill speculated above. Very few distributors or retail chains would have been willing to incur the additional time and expense of carding and wrapping individual catalog 45s themselves.

Thanks for stimulating my old brain. I remember a customer coming into the store in 1968 with a copy of Bob Dylan 'Like A
Rolling Stone' B/W 'Gates Of Eden' and asking me what the meaning of the 'punch' or 'drill-hole' was. I told him it was a way
of marking the record so the record company would not accept as a return for credit. "Where did you purchase this?", I asked.
He told me the name of an independent drug store in the area and told me it was sealed in plastic. "How much did you pay for
this"? "Thirty nine cents". Great price if it hasn't been used. I looked at it and it had been used but not abused. The Old-
Timers in the store said it was probably put there by a juke box operator who had a concession in order to get rid of 45 rpm
records he had no use for, anymore. -Bill.