I can't vote on this one. I originally heard The Beatles (and many other bands of the era) on that marginal sound reproduction device known as the AM radio, which obviously was mono, and probably not very good mono at that. I was also listening to the U.S. mixes, which were unmercifally tampered with by Capitol Records and their mindless engineers, though to their credit they
did optimize the overall sound for the playback device of choice, i.e., the AM radio. Those songs sounded
huge coming out of a 3" speaker and drove an entire generation to near madness (in a good way, I should add).
So the enjoyment was not in the sound quality, it was hearing the songs and somehow saving enough money to buy the mono singles of I Want To Hold Your Hand b/w I Saw Her Standing There, or Can't Buy Me Love b/w You Can't Do That, or I Feel Fine b/w She's A Woman, or even the funky VeeJay release of Do You Want To Know A Secret b/w Thank You Girl, and playing them on my parents' stereo (yeah, right) phonograph.
Now that I have something measurably better than an AM radio with a 3" speaker, my head tells me to go with the stereo recordings. But my heart says perhaps the mono is the way to go. Too early to tell, but assuming I still have disposableincome, I'd probably get both.