The UK in the 1950s

was so drab (but wonderfully quiet, safe and peaceful)
that when 12" (30 cm) LPs became widely available
in 'the provinces', culture-starved boys
like myself wrote to Decca, HMV, etc.,
begging for free, random record-sleeves. 
Amazingly, we received them – probably because
the recording had been superseded and they were old stock.   

I remember this splendid blue and gold photo
of Tutankhamun's mummy, which remained
until the 1990s on a wall of my boyhood-bedroom. 
 

LP sleeve, 1953.

(On the day I wrote this, I listened on the internet
to a performance of the beautiful 'cello version
of Franck's sonata in A
broadcast from St Mark's Church, Dundela, Belfast,
less than a kilometre from where I lived.)

I was lucky.  I might instead have received this:

or even worse.