Pink Floyd Animals Vinyl at 50: 1977 First Pressing, Value and Best Edition

Harvest released Animals in the UK on 21 January 1977. Wikipedia and Discogs give that date, though some sources, including several anniversary articles, say 23 January. Columbia followed in the US in February. It is the album with the inflatable pig between the chimneys of Battersea Power Station. It sits between Wish You Were Here and The Wall, and for years it was treated as the overlooked one. That is no longer true of its search interest: demand for Pink Floyd Animals vinyl has been rising through 2026 ahead of the anniversary.

As of 12 October 2026, Pink Floyd had not announced a 50th-anniversary edition. The band's news page lists other catalogue projects, but nothing for Animals. The most recent official versions remain the 2016 remaster and the 2018 remix, released in 2022. If a new edition is announced, it will join the comparison below.

This guide covers the two original pressings collectors argue about, UK Harvest and US Columbia, and how to identify each from the record in your hands. It also lists the reissues that are easy to confuse with an original, what a copy is really worth, and which edition to buy if you simply want to hear it.

Pink Floyd were signed to EMI's Harvest label in Britain and most of the world, and to Columbia in North America. So Animals has two parallel originals, made from different lacquers in different factories.

Which is "better" is an old argument. On the Steve Hoffman forum's long-running Animals thread, one collector wrote that a UK 3U/2U copy "sounds excellent, much better than an early US copy". Others defend US and Japanese copies. Treat that as listener opinion, not measurement. For value, the UK first pressing is the one collectors chase more, partly because the British sleeve and inner are the reference package.

Both pressings sold in huge numbers, and that sets the ceiling on value for ordinary copies. Our Pink Floyd vinyl collection guide puts Animals in the context of the whole catalogue.

Start with the sleeve, then confirm with the runout, because a 1980 reissue copies the sleeve almost exactly.

1. Catalogue number: SHVL 815 on the cover and labels. The EMI international number 0C 064-98 434 is printed, partly boxed, on the back cover.
2. Sleeve: a matt, thick cardboard gatefold with a wide spine, the front opening edge sealed with a fold-under, and no barcode. The printer's code 7701 TM (Garrod & Lofthouse, January 1977) appears on the sleeve.
3. Inner sleeve: a top-opening cardboard sleeve printed with the lyrics, with rounded corners and a thumb cut-out along the opening edge. It is easily lost, and a copy without it is incomplete.
4. Labels: the custom picture labels, with label matrices SHVL 815 A and SHVL 815 B.
5. Runout, the decider: EMI-pressed copies stamp a matrix ending in a cut number and "U". The earliest run starts at SHVL 815 A-2U / SHVL 815 B-2U. Small letters at 3 o'clock and digits at 9 o'clock identify the stamper and mother. Discogs documents about forty runout combinations, running up to 4U and 5U.

The 1980 trap: the UK reissue of around 1980 keeps the catalogue number SHVL 815, the same 7701 printer's code, the thick cover with fold-under and wide spine, and no barcode. Only the dead wax gives it away: SHVL 815 A-5 HTM and similar, with HTM for Harry Moss, who cut the later lacquers.

Our guide to runout and matrix numbers explains the EMI system in detail.

Columbia's Animals is catalogue JC 34474, with the label matrices AL 34474 (side A) and BL 34474 (side B). The early copies share these traits:

• No barcode on the cover. Discogs notes that later pressings carry one. A 1983 Pitman reissue has 0 7464-34474-1 printed on the back.
• A printed cardboard inner sleeve with the lyrics. Later US copies came with a black paper lyric sleeve.
• Runouts like AL 34474-2G / BL 34474-2F, followed by a letter for the plant: P for Pitman, New Jersey, T for Terre Haute, Indiana, and S for Santa Maria, California. As with every major-label album of the period, the plants pressed simultaneously. None of them is "the" first pressing.
• The spine of early copies is marked with the price code X798.

Canada had its own JC 34474, pressed at CBS's Don Mills plant, with hand-etched runouts like AL 34474-1B-2G. If the label says JC 34474 and the cover has no barcode, you have a 1977-era North American copy. The runout tells you which plant pressed it. Our first pressing identification guide shows the same method for any Columbia album of the decade.

Outside Britain and North America, EMI's national companies issued Animals under their own numbers in 1977:

• Germany: Harvest 1C 064-98 434, pressed by EMI Electrola, with a cardboard lyric inner sleeve.
• Netherlands: Harvest 5C 062-98434, made by EMI-Bovema.
• France: Harvest 2C 068-98434, pressed by Pathé Marconi at Chatou.
• Italy: 3C 064-98434. Spain: 10C 066-98434. Sweden: 7C 064-98434.
• Japan: CBS/Sony 25AP 340, list price ¥2,500, with an English lyric inner sleeve and a Japanese insert. On the Hoffman forum, opinions on it split sharply.

The ones that interest collectors most are the 1977 limited pink vinyl pressings. In Germany, a "Farbige Pressung, Limitierte Sonderauflage" on catalogue 1C 064-98 434 had runouts referring to the Dutch 5C 062-98434 number. In France, the pink edition carries a Y suffix (2C 068-98434Y) on the spine and back. It came with a large shrink sticker reading "Disque rose - Tirage limité" and lacquers cut by Jean-Claude Pellé, whose name is etched in the runout. These are period colour pressings, not modern variants, so check the runout before paying a collector's price for one. Our coloured vinyl guide explains how to tell a period colour pressing from a later one.

Discogs lists 233 vinyl versions of Animals. The table below picks out the first issues by country, the two 1977 pink pressings, the reissues that look like originals, and the modern editions. The runout column shows side A.

Reading the table: the 1980 UK and 1983 US rows are the reissues most often sold as originals. Check their runouts against the earliest UK and US rows. In 1997 EMI issued a remastered limited-edition LP, catalogue EMD 1116.

The two modern editions answer different questions:

• 2016 remaster, PFRLP10. 180g, remastered from the original analogue tapes by Bernie Grundman with James Guthrie and Joel Plante, and pressed at Record Industry in the Netherlands. It keeps the 1977 mix. A 2025 Columbia/Sony pressing, 88875184271, comes from the same remaster.
• 2018 remix, PFRLP28. Released on 16 September 2022 with a 28-page booklet. It is a new stereo mix, and the cover was re-photographed. The Deluxe box, PFR28D (7 October 2022), adds a Blu-ray and DVD with the first 5.1 mix of the album and the 1977 original stereo mix in high resolution.

Most 1977 copies of Animals are common records. About 25,300 Discogs users list the UK SHVL 815 original and about 22,200 the US JC 34474, and those are only the copies someone bothered to catalogue. As a rule of thumb, a played copy of either sells for listening-copy money, often less than a new 180g reissue. The marketplace has plenty of alternatives.

What lifts a copy above that:

• An early UK stamper in top condition. This is the documented high end. A UK copy described as mint, with the A-2U matrix and the wide spine, sold for £706 on eBay on 25 February 2012, according to the Popsike archive. That is an outlier for an exceptional copy, not what a typical copy fetches.
• Completeness. The lyric inner sleeve is part of the record. Without it, a UK or US original is incomplete.
• The 1977 pink vinyl pressings from Germany and France, which are scarcer than the black ones.
• Condition, above all. Animals is long tracks with quiet passages, where surface noise is obvious. Grade honestly with our vinyl grading guide.

A copy is not worth more just because it is "from 1977" or because the plant letter is P rather than T. To see what copies are being offered for today, look at our market card: Pink Floyd – Animals (UK Harvest SHVL 815) on VinylAI Market.

Decide first which mix you want, then which copy.

On the Hoffman forum, opinions on which original sounds best go both ways, and the Japanese pressing divides people most. If you are buying second-hand, buy condition first and country second. A quiet US copy beats a noisy UK one every time you play it.

Not sure what you have? Photograph the label and the VinylAI app identifies the exact pressing, from SHVL 815 to PFRLP28, and adds it to your collection.