The phone lines were deluged all day as thousands of fans wore out the redial buttons on their telephones, and twelve lucky people won what must be among the rarest of all Queen collectables. The breakdown of the tracks they chose is as follows:
The details of the singles remained shrouded in mystery for a long time, and it was not known with certainty how many copies of each single were pressed, what the sleeve looked like, or even whether they were pressed on 7" or 12" vinyl. Eventually, after about 18 months, a copy appeared in a Record Collector advertisement to solve the mysteries and some details also started to emerge from Parlophone.
The singles were pressed as one-sided 12" vinyl. All of the singles had the same sleeve (a black sleeve with a white Queen crest). The sleeve was hand-numbered on the back and the track details were also written in by hand. The label was plain white.
According to sources, between 8 and 15 copies of each single were pressed (with the excess presumably given to band members and Parlophone and Virgin bigwigs in the same way as for the blue vinyl Bohemian Rhapsody). It is presumed that only the records of the actual competition winners were signed, but it is known for sure both that unsigned sleeves do exist and that unsleeved vinyls do exist.
One important mistake seems to have been made in the pressing of these records. During the Queen Day, no caller gave "Heaven For Everyone" as their chosen track, and one caller chose "Made In Heaven". However, a vinyl edition of "Heaven For Everyone" was definitely made, and it seems that no edition of "Made In Heaven" was manufactured. It is not known whether this is a mistake caused by the similarity of the track names, or whether the caller was able to change their mind after the competetion
In another manufacturing error, it seems that a double-sided edition of the "Heaven For Everyone" single was mistakenly pressed. This is believed to have been destroyed in the factory.
As a postscript to this article: when the records were sent to the band members to be signed it seems that Roger was in something less than a serious mood, as the copy sold through Record Collector magazine was signed by him with the name "Eartha Kitt" (it is clearly his writing, though, and it is something he has done on several occasions when signing things for auction at the Queen Fan Club convention). While this may have been funny at the time, someone spending their life savings on adding one of these items to their collection may not be quite so amused!