Here We Go！
Introducing my Sex Pistols collection.
This time I’ve put together the UK catalogue numbers for Never Mind The Bollocks, focusing on the Virgin Records era.
Even for the same album, the catalogue number changes depending on format and release period — which confused me no end when I started looking into this properly.
I’ve pulled this together from various sources plus what I actually hold myself (vinyl and CD), so some of it involves a degree of guesswork. Please take it as not 100% verified.
※This covers UK/Virgin official releases only. For Japanese pressing catalogue numbers, see the “Catalogue Number Trivia” section in the NMTB CD obi gallery article.
🧷 1977: Variations from the initial release
✔️ V 2086 (LP)
- “V” was Virgin’s serial prefix for albums
The earliest pressing carried 11 tracks
- Originally planned as a promo-only pressing, but once the 12-track French edition (via Barclay Records) started being imported into the UK, the commercial release was brought forward earlier than intended
- Much of this earliest pressing was actually sent to France (to counter the Barclay import) rather than staying in the UK, with the remainder going to the UK, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Italy and the US
- The rear sleeve is plain pink (blank back), with no poster or bonus 7″ included
- It’s often quoted as a “limited pressing of 1,000”, though that figure is questionable — there are simply too many surviving copies, and at least three separate pressing variants turn up in various combinations
- This was followed by an 11-track edition bundled with a one-sided single featuring “Submission” (VDJ 24) and a poster (SPOTS 001, covered below), and then a further 11-track pressing known as the “Branson” release
A note on the blank (pink) back
- The master was eventually replaced with the 12-track version (now including “Submission”), at which point V 2086 became the 12-track edition. Track order also differs from the 11-track pressing
- Even after the switch to 12 tracks, leftover stock of the plain pink rear sleeves from the 11-track era kept being used. In other words, “blank back” doesn’t automatically mean “earliest 11-track pressing”
⚠️ Some copies on the market exploit this overlap — pairing a 12-track blank-back sleeve with an 11-track record and selling it as if it were an ultra-rare “1st pressing”. This is likely part of why the “limited to 1,000” figure doesn’t add up against the number of copies actually out there.
Label and rear sleeve variations
- The label colour and text went through several changes, from the early blue label through to the later red/green “scrawl” design Virgin used
- The 1978 and 1979 repressings (standard pressings, as well as misprints and picture-disc variants) still carried the V 2086 number at this stage
- The rear sleeve artwork also went through several versions: 11-track → 12-track (standard) → “Belsen 2 Liar”
- This “Belsen 2 Liar” variant (where “Liar” appears twice and “Belsen” turns up where it shouldn’t) appeared towards the end of V 2086’s run and carried straight over into the early OVED 136 pressings (below)
- 1From the 1985 reissue onwards, the number switched to OVED (see below)
✔️ SPOTS 001 (limited package)
- The designation used for the first-run limited package: LP + VDJ 24 (one-sided single with “Submission”) + Jamie Reid’s collage poster
- Printed on a sticker applied over the shrinkwrap, kept separate from the standard V 2086 number
- Comes in two sticker colours (green and orange)
✔️ VDJ 24 (one-sided single with “Submission”)
(Photo shows the single included with the 30th anniversary edition, not the original.)
- A one-sided 7″ single featuring “Submission”, bundled with the second pressing of the 11-track LP (the SPOTS 001 package)
- Added as a countermeasure once it became known that “Submission” was already on the French edition (12 tracks, via Barclay Records)
- Once V 2086 itself moved to the 12-track configuration, the practice of including a separate single was dropped
✔️ VP 2086 (picture disc)
- “P” is presumed to stand for “Picture”
- Released three months after the standard edition
- Comes with an 11.75″ square card insert to stop the sleeve warping
- The matrix on the disc itself is stamped “V2086”
rubbishflower, whom this blog is indebted to, apparently has a VP 2086 with a “hole” in it (see the original discovery post and the follow-up). A wonderfully niche mystery, but here’s what it turns out to be:
This “hole” doesn’t appear on standard VP 2086 copies — it’s specific to the one copy rubbishflower holds — and it’s since been recorded on the Sex Pistols reference site “God Save The Sex Pistols” as a “press-out card hole”
✔️ TCV 2086 (cassette)
- “TC” (Cassette) + “V” — presumed to correspond to the LP’s V series
- Released 1979
- White shell, white sticker label
- Released by Virgin (phonographic copyright); publisher: Warner Bros. Music Ltd.
- Producers: Bill Price, Chris Thomas
🧷 Later pressings (reissues)
✔️ OVED 136 (1985 LP reissue)
- A separate number from the 1977 original V 2086, used from the October 1985 reissue onwards
- The original V 2086 stampers were formally retired and new plates cut for this pressing
- Light grey label, with a dark grey Virgin logo and a “V” logo in a grey rectangle, black text
- The producer credit should read “Chris Thomas and Bill Price”, but the actual pressing misprints it as “Chris Thomas or Bill Price”
- The rear sleeve artwork is based on “Belsen 2 Liar” but with the tracklist corrected
- In practice, early OVED 136 pressings still went out with the “Belsen 2 Liar” sleeve carried over from the end of the V 2086 run, before being corrected to the proper 12-track sleeve part-way through — so this misprint spans both the V 2086 and OVED 136 numbers
- No track timings listed
✔️ OVEDC 136 (1985 cassette reissue)
- The cassette counterpart in the OVED series; “C” presumably denotes cassette
- Released October 1985
- Replaces TCV 2086 (the 1979 cassette) with the OVEDC number from the 1985 reissue onwards
- Grey shell, fake screws, Dolby
🧷 From the CD era onwards
I’ve covered how to tell the CD-era numbers (CDV/CDVX) apart in detail in a separate article, so just an outline here.
✔️ CDV 2086 (first UK CD)
- Presumed to stand for “Compact Disc + Virgin”; the first CD catalogue number corresponding to V 2086
- The copyright notice on the rear sleeve reads “©1985”, though that doesn’t necessarily reflect the actual release year (more on that at the link below)
✔️ CDVX 2086 (successor to CDV)
- The number that succeeded CDV; the standard jewel-case edition most commonly found on the market
- Carries the remastered audio
I’ve covered how to tell the CDV and CDVX pressings apart in detail here:
🧷 EMI Centenary edition (1997)
✔️ LPCENT20 (EMI Centenary LP)
- Released 1997, 180g weight, 12 tracks (reissue of the original 1977 edition)
- “CENT” = Centenary — marking 100 years since the founding of The Gramophone Company, EMI’s forerunner, in 1897
- The “20” appears to be a sequence number within the Centenary series (part of the catalogue number itself), rather than a reference to a 20th anniversary
- Two versions exist, distinguished by the shrinkwrap sticker (blue “THE MILLENNIUM VINYL COLLECTION” or silver “EMI100”)
- Uses the original artwork, though the colours differ slightly from the original
- Runout is stamped, not etched
🧷 A note on the Universal era
Between 2012 and 2013, Universal Music acquired EMI’s recorded music division, bringing the Sex Pistols catalogue under Universal.
From this point on, rather than a structured numbering system like V/VP/OVED/CDV, releases tend to use individual codes on a release-by-release basis — for example SexPisLP77, SexPisd1977, SexPissv77, and so on.
As this article focuses on the UK/Virgin-era catalogue numbers, I’ve left the individual Universal-era codes out of scope here.
🧷 Summary
Bringing together the Virgin-era NMTB UK catalogue numbers by format and period:
LP
| Number | Period |
|---|---|
| V 2086 | 1977–1985 |
| OVED 136 (reissue) | 1985 |
| LPCENT20 (EMI Centenary) | 1997 |
Limited package
| Number | Period |
|---|---|
| SPOTS 001 | 1977 |
Bundled single (7″)
| Number | Period |
|---|---|
| VDJ 24 (with “Submission”) | 1977 |
Picture disc
| Number | Period |
|---|---|
| VP 2086 | 1978 |
Cassette
| Number | Period |
|---|---|
| TCV 2086 | 1979 |
| OVEDC 136 (reissue) | 1985 |
CD
| Number | Period |
|---|---|
| CDV 2086 (first) | 1985– |
| CDVX 2086 (successor to CDV) | – |
I’ll keep updating this as I come across more.
byebye 👋
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