The Gold Record Company - is it genuine?

[LunarOne]

I'm trying to find a suitable gift for a rock band superfan, a company valled The Gold Record Company seems to sell supposedly limited edition gold records mounted on plaques.

https://thegoldrecordcompany.co.uk

They insinuate that they are connected with the music industry with this at the bottom of their site:
The Gold Record Company and British Music Industry Awards are trading names of BMI Awards Ltd.
BMI Awards Ltd, Silverstream House, Fitzroy Street, London W1T 6EB, United Kingdom.

But I can't find any genuine link to the music industry and the companies house info lists one chap running a microbusiness.

So what's going on here? Is it a proper business selling genuine licenced products, or is it just some guy spray painting records and mounting them on a plaque for a healthy profit? The former seems unlikely, but if the latter, how has he not been litigated into non-existence by now?

No. I don't trust truspilot reviews.

Edited by LunarOne on Thursday 3rd July 19:15

[ralphrj]

I would steer clear.

The website says that they have been "making gold discs for over 25 years" but the company was incorporated in 2022.

The sole director has 6 previous companies all of which were subject to compulsory strike off.

The site implies that these are official gold discs issued by the BMI (British Music Industry) but the UK trade body for recorded music is actually the BPI (British Phonographic Industry).

Run don't walk.

[vacant-100]

The official BPI discs are made by a different company and feature a hologram on them. You can't just get one made up - you need to have proof your album has done the requisite number of streams and sales (100 paid streams = 1 sale in the UK).

They also cost nearly twice what this guy is knocking them out for, but they're proper plated discs (although the record in the frame is not the record that's being certified) and weigh a good few kg.

[Wacky Racer]

I'd say they probably look quite nice on the wall for a die hard fan, probably not authentic, but so what........, if the quality is OK, can't see a problem,

Whether they are worth that much is up to the individual

I wouldn't mind a Led Zeppelin one.

[LunarOne]

Wacky Racer said:

I'd say they probably look quite nice on the wall for a die hard fan, probably not authentic, but so what........, if the quality is OK, can't see a problem,

Whether they are worth that much is up to the individual

I wouldn't mind a Led Zeppelin one.

If you're a collector of Ferraris, then you're not likely to want to add a Morris Marina wearing a fibreglass Ferrari lookey-likey body to your collection, even if the quality is sort of okay. You want the real thing.

If you're a stamp collector, you wouldn't want a stamp that someone has printerd out themselves, even if it's still a bit of paper with a design on the front and a sticky backing on the reverse.

If you're looking for that one-of-a-kind Blancpain Tourbillon, you're unlikely to be happy with a cheap Casio, even if it tells the time more faithfully than that £30,000 watch you were after.

So while you might think that it might look nice on the wall, paying good money to some guy who is pretending to be selling something that's genuine, limited edition and authorised when in fact he has no affiliation with the recored industry and is using £5 worth of materials is not something I could stomach. And even worse, buying knockoff items to give as a gift to someone who would likely know the difference. Tasteless.