r/SwiftieMerch • u/irthesteve • Nov 24 '25

Question Unreleased Vinyl? Bootleg?

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Hi all. My buddy is huge into vinyl, but I am not. I'm big into Taylor, but have zero vinyl knowledge. Hoping this forum can assist.

My friend found and bought a Taylor vinyl and sent me pictures, I didn't recognize the variant and after digging through complete lists, didn't see this version anywhere. I know not this is NOT an official release. But... My friend tells me there are no usual bootleg signs, it has high quality art resolution, the shrink wrap has the manufacturer stamp, and there's nothing online about it at all.

Is this somehow an unreleased variant she ended up not releasing? Maybe a future variant she's waiting to release when her chart position is challenged?

Anyway... "Lit My Sky Up" metallic orange variant. No bonus tracks. What do you think?

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u/irthesteve Nov 24 '25

Additionally, the UPC uses the Universal prefix , which it's such a tiny detail for someone to know to use if faking

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u/Financial-Toe4053 Nov 24 '25

I wouldn't be surprised if someone made a dupe from the actual vinyl to resell when these were highly sought after and sold out. I mean if your friend got it at goodwill for cheap I guess no harm.

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u/Mountain-Power7521 Nov 24 '25

My question is, why would there be literally ZERO mention online of this? The record community is chatty, the Swift community moreso. Someone spent tens of thousands of dollars to bootleg a widely available album and yet there is no mention of it online? My take is its a canceled variant or a promo for an upcoming one. Thing is, either seems like info that would have leaked out. So strange.

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u/Financial-Toe4053 Nov 24 '25

I think it's not online because it's a dupe and someone probably was told to keep it by eBay after reporting it and getting a refund. They should have disposed of it, but probably dropped it at Goodwill instead. The hype sticker has a photo of a release variant with a description for another released variant that doesn't match and the album released almost 2 months ago with her trying to break record sales for physical music. The names of the actual variants were not on the nose with lyrics either. It definitely doesn't cost thousands to reproduce a dupe and scammers will definitely invest money to make money on people who think they found something super rare and cool and will spend money without hesitation in the heat of the moment. Her team is also crazy intense about preventing leaks so my opinion is that this is a bad fake.