Germany seems to have had a special relationship with Queen. In September I talked about a 3″ CD-single set which was released for the German market in 1988 or 1989. German fans got another CD collection called Queen Mania which is covered in today’s feature.

The set

Queen Mania is a beautiful and, these days, very rare CD box set. It comes as a flight case and is limited to 1000 numbered copies. It measures 37cm/14.5″ in length, 16.5cm/6.5″ in height and 17cm/6.7″ in width and has a substantial weight to it (4.2kg/9.3lbs!) due to the case itself, but also its contents.

As one can see, the case can be closed with two locks on the front. It also comes with a leather handle attached to the lid, allowing to transport the case with relative ease if needed.

As expected with a flight case, its corners and sides have been reinforced with metal plates which makes a nice contrast against the overall bright red colour.

The set’s individual number is machine stamped into a metal strip on the front above the Queen logo. This particular set has number 0935 as can be seen below. Fun fact: a German collector owns copy number 0002 which was supposedly reserved for Freddie. It remains unclear whether Freddie actually had that set in his possession at one point in time.

Some (or all?) copies came with a gold sticker applied to the front of the lid stating Special Edition For XXXX – Germany where XXXX would be a store chain or distributor in Germany. Known variations so far include H’Art, Discovery, JPC and Lerche. It is very well possible that each chain had a certain number of units allocated. Though based on findings over the years, it looks like each chain received box sets with random limited edition numbers instead of receiving a number of sets within a certain range.

The limited edition number, machine stamped on the front

When the lid is opened, one is greeted by its nice contents. The interior of the box is a thick piece of black foam which houses the set’s contents, but also gives it adequate protection against the otherwise harsh and rough looking nature of the flight case itself.

The biggest selling point of this set back then was arguably the band’s albums on CD. The set contains all albums from Queen (1973) up to and including The Miracle (1989). Besides the 13 studio albums, the set also includes Greatest Hits and the two live albums Live Killers and Live Magic, making a total of 16 albums or 17 discs.

The set contains three more items besides the CD’s. The first one, as per the photo above, is a double sided poster which comes in a custom made white envelope featuring the box set name and record company logo plus the words limited edition.

The second is a lovely burgundy-colored cotton t-shirt with the Queen-Mania name printed on the left chest. I think that different sizes for this shirt were made as I have seen sizes L (large), but also XL (extra large) as per my set.

The third and last item in this set is a small badge which only contains the band’s name plus a crown above the name. There was however once an eBay auction in January 2008 for one set which contained not one, but three badges. It is unclear whether the additional two were added by someone at one point in time.

This set is already rare as only 1000 copies were ever made, but a full complete set is even harder to find. The badge tends to get lost due to its size. The envelope can get ripped easily and of course people liked to pin the poster to a wall. The t-shirt would be a nice item to wear, resulting in another item being removed from the box.

The poster (folded) outside the envelope plus the badge and t-shirt

The poster, when unfolded, contains the band photo which was also used for The Miracle album release. The other side of the poster contains four individual write-ups for each band member, a brief history about the band, a single discography and the track listing for each album. All of the text is written in German. It is interesting to note that the individual biographies do not mention Freddie’s 1988 Barcelona album release, nor Roger’s The Cross band project and John’s input for the Biggles movie.

The front and back of the unfolded poster

There appears to have been some discussions about its musical contents for this box. Some believe that only all albums up to Live Magic were included in this set. Others state that dealers (at least confirmed for Karstadt) received empty cases and had to add the CD albums themselves or you could buy the case empty yourself.

The poster however confirms its contents as it clearly states, in German, “Das “QUEEN Mania” Flightcase enthält:” (The “Queen Mania” flight case contains:) after which it lists all albums up to and including The Miracle.

A close-up from the poster showing an overview of the CD’s included in the set

The CD’s

From a music point of view, these CD’s are a mixture of 1986-based re-issues and (near) first pressings.

The albums Queen up to The Works are 1986-1989 re-pressings based on the 1986 digital masters. These were, at the time, new digital master editions since most of those albums had not been previously released on CD. Exceptions are News Of The World, Greatest Hits, The Game and The Works which were released on CD in 1983 (the first three) and 1984 (The Works). Though I cannot confirm whether new digital masters were created in 1986 for these four albums.

When I dived deep into the world of Queen around 1993, I started with these CD pressings (though not through this set). I recall that I was very firm on just wanting to own these type of pressings and not the new 1994 digital remasters once they hit the market in Europe.

I still like the fact, when sorted correctly, that the albums have sequential catalogue numbers. Though Live Killers breaks that sequence. CDS 7 46211 8 is the catalogue number for both discs which is mentioned on the spine. Whereas disc one has the number CDP 7 46211 2 and disc two CDP 7 46212 2. Greatest Hits and The Works use the old 1984 CD catalogue numbers. I do think it is quite a big coincidence that The Works got catalogue number CDP 7 46016 2 back in 1984 whereas the 1986 re-pressing of Hot Space, the album before The Works, got CDP 7 46215 2. So there is some kind of sequence (15 and 16) after all. Was this the result of some good planning?

Although I prefer to have some unity and alignment, the different spine layout used for each CD has its charms. But why is there a missing “|” on the spine of Live Killers (see the photo below)? It is also just missing on the left side and not the right…

A close-up of all the CD spines

I have mainly been listening to the most recent 2011 remasters since they came out. When I played the discs from this set and thus hearing these masters since late 2010/early 2011 again, I was pleasantly surprised about how well they sound. Yes, they certainly have their shortcomings (background noise, lack of some highs and lows), but they they may not suffer from (a lot of) digital tinkering and could therefore be closer to how these albums sounded on vinyl when initially released (yes, this is all depending on which stereo masters were used when creating these 1986 digital masters).

Track indexing was not always done properly for these 1986 masters. The most notable ones are Long Away (from A Day At The Races) starting with the acapella outro from the previous song You Take My Breath Away and Funny How Love Is (from Queen II) starting with the last 24 seconds from the previous track The March Of The Black Queen.

The last three albums, A Kind Of Magic, Live Magic and The Miracle were both released on CD and vinyl (plus cassette) during their initial release so no new (re-)masters existed when this box set was released. A Kind Of Magic and The Miracle each feature three bonus tracks when compared to their vinyl counterpart.

Release date

As with the contents of this set and based on a Google search, it seems that there is also no agreement concerning the release date.

Some websites list a release date of 1989, one mentions 1986 (which is 100% incorrect) and Discogs leaves the date completely open (blank) at the time of writing.

When reading the poster, it states that Queen exists 20 years plus the fact that the band started in 1970. This arguably means that this set was released sometime in 1990. The poster also contains an overview of all single releases which goes all the way up to and including The Miracle which was released in November 1989. This therefore pushes the release date to at least December 1989, though I doubt that the team, who assembled this set, had sufficient time to prepare it for a December 1989 release. The fact of mentioning the band’s age of 20 years strengthens the case of a 1990 release in my opinion.

A close-up of the text (in German) stating their 20 years of activity

I am however curious whether a reader of this post bought this set during its initial release and recalls when he or she purchased it in a shop? Or what its contents was?

Even though the 1995 The Ultimate Queen 20CD Box Set contains all albums and is therefore more complete, I think this German set is the one to own and a greater feast to the eyes. It comes with a nice t-shirt (not included in the 1995 box) and, in case one can read German, has decent liner notes on the poster (not present in the 1995 box set booklet). Not to mention that the German set is much more sturdy and discs are less prone to scratches since each disc comes in its own jewel case (versus no jewel cases for the 1995 set).

All in all this is a great set to own and a great piece to show off against other Queen collectors, considering its rarity status and monetary value. Because let’s face it, that is part of what us collectors like to do and one of the drives to build a collection 🙂

Many thanks to the following people for their valuable direct and indirect input: Cheryl French, Michael Ehrt, Remy Hunter and Walter Bazen