Search any album on eBay and you'll find copies described as a first pressing, an original, or an early press. Some of them are. The problem is that the words cost the seller nothing, and almost nothing in a standard listing lets you check them.
This isn't really about dishonest sellers. Most of the time nobody is lying to you at all.
Why the claim is so easy to make
When a label repressed an album, it very often kept the original catalogue number. So the number printed on the sleeve — the thing everyone reaches for first, because it is the most official-looking marking on the record — stopped meaning one specific pressing the moment the second run happened.
The Stone Roses' ORE LP 502 is the example we keep coming back to. That one number covers several distinct pressings. One has a median sold price of around £153. Another, from the same year and under the same number, has sold for as little as £30.
Price either off a single figure and nobody has lied to you. You've just paid for a record that isn't in the sleeve.
Note the same year part. It kills the obvious shortcut, which is to date the record from the year on the label. Two pressings, one number, one year, and a fivefold difference in what people actually pay.
So when a seller writes "first pressing", they may be repeating what the catalogue number told them, in good faith. The number simply doesn't carry that information.
What the words are worth on their own
Roughly nothing — but they're not worthless as a signal about the seller.
- A listing that says "first pressing" and nothing else is an opinion.
- A listing that says "first pressing — matrix reads A-1/B-1, label has the small logo top-left" is a claim you can check.
- A listing with no pressing claim at all but good photographs is usually the better buy, because you can decide for yourself.
The second and third of those tell you the seller either knows what they have or is happy for you to work it out. The first tells you neither way.
The two photographs to ask for
If a listing matters to you and the pictures don't settle it, ask for two things. Most sellers will oblige, and the ones who won't have told you something useful anyway.
- The label, straight on and readable. Text, logos, their placement, the rim print — this is where the differences between pressings usually live, and it's what an identification actually turns on.
- The run-out groove, angled into the light so the etchings show. It won't always separate two pressings on its own — often one engineer cut every variant across years, so the same signature appears on all of them — but combined with the label it narrows things considerably.
Then check what you see against the pressing you think you're buying. That's what First press or repress and How to read a matrix number are for.
The short version
Treat "first pressing" in a listing as a hypothesis, not a fact. It costs nothing to type and the catalogue number can't confirm it. What can confirm it is a clear photograph of the label — so if the price depends on the claim, ask for the photograph before you bid, not after it arrives.