Alternatives to black vinyl; Picture Discs, Coloured Vinyl and Shaped Discs, are fascinating things. Even though it doesn't improve the music that we originally bought the records for, (Picture disc sound quality is not usually as good), they are intriguing and interesting variations that many collectors hold dear.

I am at present trying to collect the entire set of Enforcers picture discs that came out on the seminal Reinforced Records Label. The music on these discs are awesome but there are just as many great records to out there on plain black vinyl that just don't have what it takes for me to want to track them down and bring them together.

Promo and test pressing values are greatly increased by the inclusion of a reaction sheet or press release. Prodigy's first record 'Where Evil Lurks EP' is worth £70 more with the original press release intact than without, the same goes for many other sought after promos.

Coloured Vinyl has been done to death and it doesn't really hold much value to a collector in most circumstances anymore, mainly because it's a mediocre record that has been released on coloured vinyl as a gimmick to try and shift more units.
There are, as always, many exceptions to the rule. In the last ten years many dance music promos have been sent out to the DJs on coloured vinyl only to gain a full release pressed on black vinyl. The only reason I can imagine the record labels did this is to make DJs pick the records out with ease from there weekly huge pile of test presses and promos they had to wade through.

There have been some absolute classic promos though, that have greatly increased in value due to this practice, three examples of this are:- U2 - Lemon, The perfecto mix was promo-ed very briefly on yellow vinyl, Everything But The Girl - Missing, The US promo of the Todd Terry Mix on Atlantic was clear Blue Vinyl and finally Shanks & Bigfoot - Sweet Like Chocolate, did the rounds early on pressed in chocolate coloured vinyl.

Shaped discs are usually a variation of a picture disc but with the record being cut in the shape of the image contained within the vinyl. These aren't so common in dance music but there are they are a few about including the Caustic Window (Aphex Twin) Roland TB303 shaped disc, there are only 300 of these about and they've been changing hands for £300 upwards.

The other shaped disc variation is a black or coloured vinyl cut into a shape. I have a Roc & Kato US promo that is mint green in colour and hexagonal in shape. There was also a record pool operating around 1995/6 that distributed records with different cut edges depending upon the genre of music that was on them, eg. saw tooth, turrets etc.