A Touch Of Gold – Elvis Presley Price Guide (book)

Es­ti­mated reading time is 4 minutes.

The se­ries of ar­ti­cles about the books I have pub­lished have a loose chronology and nar­ra­tive that makes the most sense if read in this order:

1.  Rock & Roll Record Al­bums Price Guide (1985)
2.  Elvis Presley Record Price Guide (1985)
3.  A Touch Of Gold – Elvis Presley Price Guide (1990)
4.  Gold­mine’s Price Guide to Col­lectible Record Al­bums (1st edi­tion, 1991)
5.  Gold­mine’s Price Guide to Col­lectible Jazz Al­bums (1992)
6.  Gold­mine’s Rock’n Roll 45RPM Record Price Guide (1994) 
7.  Gold­mine’s Price Guide to Col­lectible Record Al­bums (5th edi­tion, 1996)
8.  Blues And Rhythm & Blues 45s Of The ’50s (2000)

Links to each book are listed at the end of this article.


AFTER MY FIRST ELVIS BOOK was pub­lished by O’­Sul­livan Wood­side in 1985, I was not con­tent with the across-the-board changes that I had made. I wanted more! I had been too conservative—a word rarely as­so­ci­ated with me—in ad­justing as­signed values and wanted a second shot at get­ting it right. Five years later and I had A Touch Of Gold.

I could have given this book to Krause but chose in­stead to go the self-publishing route. With my best friend Jack Thuemmler as the busi­ness half of a two-person part­ner­ship, we launched White Dragon Press to pub­lish an on­going line of spe­cial­ized price guides for record col­lec­tors. (Our com­pany was named after Ruth, the white dragon in Anne Mc­Caf­frey’s Drag­onriders of Pern stories.)

This was a great idea that, alas, blew up in our faces. Jack and I were beset by one problem after another—each un­fore­seen, each minor. But the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of minor prob­lems taxed our re­sources (both cap­ital and per­sonal) and we failed after selling a few thou­sand copies.

Hind­sight shows me that I should have simply given the book to KP and reaped what­ever re­wards there were to be reaped and moved on. But that’s an­other story. (The reason for self-publishing was that I had total con­trol of the product, in­cluding the re­tail price of the book. I also stood to male a con­sid­er­ably more money per unit as my own publisher.)

 

NU ATOG book 600

My second Elvis book was graced with one of the first pub­lished photos of Elvis by Robert W. Dye. I met his son in 1990 at the an­nual get-together in Mem­phis during Au­gust to com­mem­o­rate Elvis Pres­ley’s life. We hit it off and he of­fered me ac­cess to his fa­ther’s photos.

Bootlegs, radios, & memorabilia

With ATOG I was able to tweak all the changes that I had made in the 1985-1986 edi­tion of the Elvis Presley Record Price Guide. I again low­ered the common records and raise the rare records, bringing the whole within some­thing re­sem­bling the re­ality of the marketplace!

Aside from the thou­sands of le­git­i­mate records is­sued in the US, I in­cluded a few new sec­tions. As the full title of the book was A Touch Of Gold – Elvis Presley Record & Mem­o­ra­bilia Price Guide, I had to have mem­o­ra­bilia! So I in­cluded these sections:

Counterfeit Sun and RCA Records

This listed all known re­pro­duc­tions of Sun Records and RCA Victor 78s, 45s, PSs, EPs, and LPs.

Bootleg Records

This listed every bootleg record known to exist at the time.

Radio Programs

This listed syn­di­cated shows shipped to radio sta­tions as ei­ther reel-to-reel tapes or LP records.

RCA Memorabilia

This listed items that were man­u­fac­tured by RCA Victor from 1955 into the ’80s to pro­mote Presley records.

Sheet Music

This listed hun­dreds of printed music for songs that Elvis had recorded.

A Touch Of Gold was well re­ceived by those who bought the first printing. When I talk to col­lec­tors, I still get told that this was the best Elvis book ever and some of them still refer to it rather than the others that have been pub­lished since!

A second edi­tion of ATOG was planned and would have been an even better book: with the as­sis­tance of Linda Jones, I was going to in­clude a chapter de­voted to the nov­el­ties man­u­fac­tured in 1956-1957 with the ap­proval of Elvis Presley Enterprises.

These charm bracelets, dolls, lip­sticks, etc., are the rarest and the most col­lected and there­fore the most valu­able of all Elvis mem­o­ra­bilia. (If anyone reading this is in con­tact with Linda, I would love to hear from her again!)

Twenty-five years late and I still want to finish that second edi­tion of A Touch Of Gold.

 

NU OW LP Guide300

This is my first book pub­lished by O’­Sul­livan Wood­side and fea­tures my fa­vorite cover of any of my books.

My other books

There are eight ar­ti­cles on this site ex­plaining the var­ious books I pub­lished for record col­lec­tors. They are best read in the fol­lowing order, which is roughly chronological:

1.  O’Sullivan Woodside’s Rock & Roll Record Al­bums Price Guide
2.  O’Sullivan Woodside’s Elvis Presley Record Price Guide
3.  Goldmine’s Price Guide to Col­lectible Record Al­bums (1st edition)
4.  Goldmine’s Price Guide to Col­lectible Record Al­bums (5th edition)
5.  Goldmine’s Rock’n Roll 45RPM Record Price Guide
6.  Goldmine’s Price Guide to Col­lectible Jazz Albums
7.  A Touch Of Gold – Elvis Record & Mem­o­ra­bilia Price Guide
8. 
Blues and R&B 45s of the ’50s Price Guide

 


 

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