Imagine how excited I got when I found out that a copy of the first Beatles LP ‘Please Please Me’, one of the greatest albums of all times, had been donated to the Liverpool Oxfam shop in Bold Street and sold on e-bay to a collector in Hampshire for over £1,300!
The album was donated to the Oxfam Bold Street shop, and the money raised from its sale will go to the Oxfam Haiti appeal.
Yesterday I phoned Gerard, manager of the Oxfam shop on Bold Street. He was telling me how busy he had been with Liverpool customers popping into the shop to give money or donate items to be sold for the Haiti Appeal. We were having a good natter and he started telling me all about his holiday plans – the first holiday in six months, the man was clearly and righlty excited about it!. Then, all of a sudden, he said: ” You know, we found a Beatles’ album in a bag with other items the other day. The record was in good condition, and the cover had only a bit of wear and tear around the edges. When we realised that it was the first album released by the Beatles and that it was one of the first 300 pressed, we went straight onto our e-bay account and put it up for auction. Do you know what it means? We were holding in our hands one of the rarest and most collectable items in existence!”.
The response for Haiti among people in the Northwest of England has been astonishing. £3.5 million has been raised in less than two weeks in the region for the Disasters and Emergency Committee Haiti Earthquake Appeal. Hundreds of people have been popping into their local Oxfam shops with cash donations, as well as special items to be sold to raise as much money as possible for the Oxfam relief operations in Haiti.
‘Please Please Me’ hit the top of the UK album charts in May 1963 and remained there for thirty weeks. The first pressing was released by Parlophone, and is a sought after item among collectors. Gerard often encourages bidders to come to the Oxfam Bold Street shop to take a look at the items on auction themselves before buying them.
It was such a great achievement for Gerard, before his well deserved holiday! Right now we are all focusing on raising as much as possible for the Haiti appeal. Gerard knows that our colleagues in Haiti are working really hard to provide thousands of people with clean water and to start re-building their lives for the future. We need more help to support them, cash donations and also music, books and clothes to be sold in our Oxfam shops. People in Liverpool and across the North West have been so generous so far, and we encourage anyone who hasn’t done done so to give what they can for the DEC Haiti Appeal.
Oxfam has now managed to raise enough money for the emergency phase of its operations in Haiti. What we need to do now, is to raise as much as possible to make sure that people in Haiti cannot just survive the emergency, but can rebuild their lives and their own future out of poverty. So, more work to do for Gerard (and for me!)-once he is back from hols!