Articles — RIAA award

In this article we take a close look inside every detail of RIAA "floater" awards, which were made from 1975-81. The purpose of this article is to help collectors of these awards know if a floater award they may be considering is authentic. 1975-81 RIAA "floater" award This article reveals some very detailed information about the construction of the awards from these eras that we previously did not want to put out there. Why? Because we don't want to arm those intent on making fake awards with any information that they use to create more authentic-looking fakes that could fool buyers. However, we...

Record awards in their earliest days were pretty plain, starting with simple dark-stained wood framed affairs with white matte boards in the 60s and early 70s. The period of 1975 thru the mid-80s brought silver and gold painted frames and charcoal-colored mattes. This was followed by a graduation to some pretty pedestrian black plastic-covered frame/black matte awards from the mid-80s through late 90s.   Just before the millennium, however, the RIAA loosened up its' previously strict design standards. This opened up the creative floodgates for award designers, who responded with an explosion of new designs. The companies that designed these new award...

The RIAA in February 1958 ago issued its first Gold album award for the cast album recording of Oklahoma! sung by Gordon MacRae. The first Gold single went to Perry Como for "Catch A Falling Star" earlier that year. After that beginning, it wouldn't be long before one Elvis Presley would capture some gold with 146.5 million album awards over 101 separate Gold (or better) albums. Today, Elvis remains the artist who has earned the most Gold Album Awards of any artist in RIAA history. As the years went on the program gained prestige and it remains an important milestone marking commercial...