Just throwing my 2 cents into the mix as I have just caught up on the last few pages.
I haven't bought any of these box sets yet, but the only reason I didn't manage to get in on the Blue Note was because I was abroad at the time without internet. I was, and probably still am, annoyed that I missed it. The reason I was so interested was because Blue Note is up there as my favourite label, so to explore some albums, some of which had not been released before and/or were more obscure picks, with a community of like minded people was an exciting prospect for me. Now the only reason I know about the issues that were had during this release (printing errors, damaged or delayed releases, the facebook page melt-down) was because of this thread. Seeing all these issues I decided to completely step back from the next releases unless it was something that REALLY caught my attention.
Im in the same boat as
@Mather when it comes to the unknown aspect of the box sets. I have bought into a few box sets over the years and each time I evaluated every part of the content financially to see if it was worth it to me. One easy example is the 'John Coltrane in Mono' box set which I bought at a discounted rate when
@Mr Moore shared it (I believe I ended up paying Ā£90 total for the 6LP - 1 7" - booklet set). Now I believe at that point I already had the first mono pressings of Giant Steps and My Favorite Things (which were of the same or better audio quality as those in the box), so I factored that into the price and automatically took them out of the equation in my head - i.e. I was paying the Ā£90 for 5lp's rather than the 6LPs+1 7". Had I of picked up the VMP Blue Note box and it turned out I already had 2 out of the 6 releases I would have been really annoyed as it would have meant I paid more per record.
I'm a complete novice when it comes to STAX but im really intrigued, so in theory this box set set should be right up my street. I feel more than happy paying the approx Ā£26 for an AAA pressing of an album as that tends to be around the average here in the UK, but do I feel comfortable paying that much for a mystery record from a label I am not familiar with.....no. If there was a 'spoiler' option to have the list sent to me, I would have done this and quickly read up on a few of them to see what I thought, which could of convinced me to cough up the cash. I MIGHT have been persuaded if the other releases had rave reviews, but from what I have seen here that is unfortunately not the case. At this point I am likely to follow the thread here and see what records appear with each episode, and pick up a copy of each myself elsewhere.
EDIT: Just checked and I paid Ā£68.54 for that box set.....damnnnnn that was a good deal