PiL* – Metal Box

I got mine yesterday. Finally. I have Second Edition, the double album but the Metal Box was hard to get by as a young Dutch bloke at the time. It seems i have the first pressing, i am very pleased with that.

Currently cleaning up my collection and changing inner and outer sleeves. I'm up to this one, and inside the box, I find that my vinyl are MINT and with all inserts and stickers!
Now I why: after going through two copies of the Box + one copy of the LP regular version from about 1979 to 1989, I got it on CD, and later, I bought this one from a reseller in the mid 90's. It was brand new. The guy had like 5 different mint copies in stock since 1979 (I believe he bought some unsold french stock). As I had by then CD and already done thousands of listen, I didn't really put this one through a lot of plays. My copy if one of the 10 000 reserved for export, as it has a sticker on the back, stating it's for export.
Now here comes the problem many here have talked about already and faced: how do you keep the discs still inside the box. They are 12" 45rpm and are bound to get a lot of dust over times from the 4 inner paper put between them. Those paper inners desintegrate over time and completely cover all the discs with white dots. Plus they are extremely static if you stored this one without playing it for last 20 years.
So I found a solution: I cleaned the records, and put then in static free inners. I considered putting them together in one outer sleeve. But right after was the Sex Pistols section, and lo and behold, I still own the three perfect New Zealand 12". They come in die cut cardboard sleeves. As I was going to put the records outside of the die cut sleeves... I just grouped them three 12" with the three PIL 12" making this the ultimate PISP BOX! I Put the box apart in storage, and will just get it to show off.
Something I noticed, the box is rusted outside, but inside is still mint as day one. So if you take a picture of the inside and flop it vertically, you have exactly the texture of how this boxed looked brand new. See you in the next one.

Just a comment with little interest lol, There are four, not three white paper spacers.

Hi, everybody ! If anyone has just the record 3 in perfect condition, let me know, mine is scratched, all the rest is NM. Thx

If anyone has the inserts for this (without the vinyl or box itself) and is interested in selling, I'm interested.

Henry Hopkins and Charlie found each other in my perfect world.

Today I almost bought the recent US edition as "Second Edition", luckily I read the comments ( thanks discogs! )... so I will wait for the metal box, hopefully not forever.
Previously Virgin reissued the metal box version on 2016 and later a second run in 2020, if they are doing it every 4 years, 2024 is the year, fingers crossed!

Came across a copy recently for £5 at a carboot, insane find. NM records too, any ideas how to clean the tin, there must be something to do to clean it up a bit.

I had this for Christmas 1979.. I still have it. Slightly oxidised tin but i love it still.. Poptones!!

Zigzag magazine published an insert (effectively) with all the lyrics (I do one "correction" where "you are unbeatable" had been modified to "you are unbearable") - you could prize it out of the centre of the magazine. Also, it didn't ruin the magazine itself as it effectively had printed the inner pages twice!

This didn't happen often as there are "music copyright clearance" issues with printing lyrics (Smash Hits would pay a lot of money to do what they did), but as ZigZag was somewhat of a high production values 'fanzine', I'm guessing they "got away with it" (unless you know different...)