A mint copy of the Beatles' infamous "butcher" cover for the now-deleted 'Yesterday and Today' collection, still in the shrink wrap, has fetched a staggering $15,300 on eBay.

'Yesterday and Today' was put together by the group's U.S. record company from leftover tracks that had been excised from their two most recent U.K. LPs, three songs from an upcoming release and a single. It immediately drew the ire of the Beatles, who put a lot of work into the sequencing of their albums. In retaliation, they submitted a brutal cover image, in which the Fab Four appeared in butchers' smocks covered with raw meat and body parts from baby dolls.

Capitol Records ended up printing roughly 750,000 copies of the album with the image before widespread complaints forced a recall. 'Yesterday and Today' was subsequently reissued with a far less inflammatory shot of the Beatles gathered around a piece of luggage. The album went out of print once the original versions of the Beatles' albums were released on CD.

The copy of 'Yesterday and Today' that recently went up for sale and drew 31 bids was produced in 1966 at a factory in Scranton, Penn. The seller said he obtained the album from a former Capitol Records executive, who provided documentation on its authenticity.