Culture

You Can Buy The AFR’s Glorious #WorldIsFukt Edition On eBay

People are spending a lot on it. Worth every penny?

by Steph Harmon  29 April 2014

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Last week, The Australian Financial Review delighted everyone by sending to print an early copy of their front page in Western Australia. “JAPAN HEADLINE”, it declared. “GALLIPOLLI TO COME BY CHRISTOPHER PYNE”, it warned. “Three lines to come here to come here”, it predicted. “Padbury reveals”, it said nonsensically.

But the best headline emblazoned across the front page was also its truest. “ARMS BUILD UP/BUYS PLANES/WORLD IS FUKT”, it read — place-holding copy referring to the controversial $24bn Tony Abbott had just spent on fighter jets, coupled with three words of analysis that an opinionated staffer certainly didn’t expect to see trending on Twitter the next day.

The newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Michael Stutchbury, apologised for the “unacceptable state of the front page”.

“The WA edition is the result of a simple error that got through normal quality control and then ended up with an extremely bad result,” he said in an email to Mumbrella. “Our initial assessment is that the error began when production staff in Sydney pressed a wrong button early yesterday afternoon that sent a clearly unfinished version of the front page to print sites around the country. This error was quickly recognised and the page was recalled from all the print sites. For whatever reason, the recalling of the unfinished page did not succeed at the Perth plant.”

Bad news for the AFR; good news for the rest of us. The limited edition has begun popping up on eBay, selling at auction with starting prices as low as $0.99, and others climbing past the $100 mark.

How much would you pay for a slice of Australian history? That’s a decision you get to make by clicking over here.

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