Die cutting of the cover image or inserts is probably the most common technique employed to create gimmick covers. It's probably also in most cases the cheapest.

There are thousands of die cut covers. Here are a few of the more popular and best known releases.

The first three Emerson Lake and Palmer albums (self titled, Tarkus and Pictures at an Exhibition) are arguably the first true Rock Mini LPs. They were released on 21st September 1994.

These had been preceded by a much earlier Lotus and a US release of some Rolling Stones albums repackaged for Japan a few short months before these. Neither of these earlier releases was true to the original vinyl although the Stones came close.

The earliest true Minis were two series of MCA Jazz releases from March 1994 (MVCZ-26 to MVCZ-45) including this example: Death and The Flower.

Over the years a number of promotional boxes have been released for "The Who". These have included "Manufacturer", "Disk Union" and "Indeterminate Origin".

Here is a selection...

16 CD box set - being 14 studio albums including 2 doubles.

According to Pink Floyd Brain Damage site there were a few glitches with this release, the most notable being a misprinting of the inner bag for the second CD in "The Wall".

There are also cases of an album being missed out and duplicates in their places.

The later Japanese release of this box set is basically identical to this box set.

Poor quality fakes exist for this set - more details below.

The original Japanese individual releases are regarded as being of a much higher quality to either of these box sets.

You can see a YouTube video of this set on the videos page.