Hi. First posts are always kind of awkward, especially when you start the thread yourself, so I'll just get right to the point...
I'm a record collector looking for information about Daniel Johnston's "Hi, How Are You" album. The copy I have is (supposably) from an original homemade batch made in 1983. I'm specifically interested in information regarding the rarity of this cassette (i.e. how many of these were originally made, how common, if at all, they are to come by today) and/or any other interesting informtion I can store with this item. Also, I would like a few "educated" second opinions to verify that my copy is indeed a 1983 original. I have edited the scan of the insert to cover an address & phone number.
You needn't have covered the info in question - Stress Records is the "record company" which has long distributed the cassettes (of course, that info is probably out of date now, so maybe it is best you covered it up). Seeing the Stress label is actually a bit confusing to me - apart from that, the tape you show definitely appears to be an original copy from the early days. That's Dan's tape brand of choice (Concertape) and his handwriting on the actual cassette (you can always tell by his capital "E"s which look like backwards "3"s). Note: it is not a "1983 original" though, because the material was RECORDED in 1983 but to the best of my knowledge that particular tape wouldn't have been handed out until 1985 or '86.
The case, though, should have a little note about the boxer Joe Louis inside (where that Stress label is instead). Mr. Stress himself, Jeff Tartakov, should spot your message eventually and he can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing this copy would have to be one of the very first ones that Jeff had a hand in, before he started writing the info on the labels for Dan and before he started buying white shell cassettes in bulk.
Either that or you have an early tape and a slightly later case which don't actually belong together.
As far as rarity, well, as I said, it's one of Dan's hand-signed tapes, and it seems to be in decent shape. They're certainly not "common" because they were the result of a one-man operation (or two). The glue Dan used rotted away many of the covers, especially in the Texas heat, and in general the tapes weren't made to last, nor did many people think ahead far enough to try and preserve them. I have seen occasional copies with covers that look about as good as yours, but I've seen more that had only a few brown chunks of paper left still attached to the plastic case.
I'd love to know a "market value" myself, but I've never actually seen one listed for sale or run across a suggested price. (The ultimate would be one with a hand-DRAWN, rather than merely hand-COPIED & CUT cover, but I have never seen one of those for "Hi How Are You" specifically - I have completely hand-made tapes of "Songs of Pain", [a prototype of] "More Songs of Pain", "Don't Be Scared" and "The What of Whom" but I've only ever seen photocopied copies of "HHAY" and "Yip! Jump Music" onward. One novelty: I also have a "two-for-one" special of those last two, with the covers shrunk and both tapes scrunched onto a 90 minute Concertape. I'm pretty sure that VERY few of those were made!
Anyhow, your copy is definitely early enough to count as "historically valuable". At least the tape part is, and probably the case as well - do you have any evidence that the two aren't mismatched?
- Not Daniel
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