The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I have a problem which I guess is almost universal among collectors and dealers . I have been buying and selling gramophones and phonographs and parts and bits and pieces since 1975 . I now have 4 lock up garages and in my house 3 rooms plus my attic full of stuff , approaching the biblical end of life 3 score years and ten , if and when I go this lot will be skipped , BUT it has some value so what to do with it before that happens ? does anyone want it bequeathed to them ? or should it go to landfill ?

Give it to me, I'll add it to the smaller pile of stuff here

Unless you start disposing of it right now, you won't have any control over where it goes when you are gone... I would hate to see it all go to a landfill, but I probably won't be here either... I'm afraid that this might happen to a lot of things that have been hoarded over the years.

Keep the things you absolutely love (within reason - limited to 10 items) and sell the rest before it is too late...

It's not just phono and gramo collectors that have this issue. Helped my brother just recently relieve a widow of two pickup truck loads of tools & such and we left behind 4 job boxes full of more stuff. The gentleman was a family friend and the widow said come take what you want and the rest we'll sell. Just too much to deal with. I have another friend who has been told by his wife it is time to unload his car hobby & all the extra parts since he's 80 now and just keep the restored JD tractor. Anyone interested in a 7.5s quarter mile racer? If you like to go 187+ mph for a few seconds I can hook you up!

Me? I’m still accumulating… machines! Not dust.

My partner and I are mid-late 50s and moving to a bigger house to accommodate the growing collection of gramophones, records, musical instruments and old cars. Already I'm planning on a serious thin down before we hit our 80s, always hoping we get there of course. I've had to deal with two epic house clearances myself so I don't want to leave a big problem for others.

So in response to the excellent question, I'd say sell what one can, and when someone young, able and enthusiastic like Alex puts their hand up for the rest, pass it on willingly for the good of the hobby - what a great thing to do.

As a well known and respected eBay seller you could spend the Winter sorting through what you have, perhaps one garage/room at a time, and listing whatever you consider saleable. There are many collectors out there looking for that elusive spare part to complete a restoration.

I list stuff all the time but more comes in than goes out always has always will I guess

I'll put Alex's details in each garage so he can collect it if contacted , maybe if his music career takes of and he gets lots of dosh he can save it all for posterity as does Mick Jones of the Clash with ephemera https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/mus ... bilia.html

Mick is at Portobello road Market most weekends adding to his archive

It's all sale stock not collectables but what you say is so right , but when I'm gone it is no longer my problem is it

Dear Mike, if you're seriously pondering what will happen to your goods after your passing, unless you decide to begin reselling in first person this huge amount of stuff you mentioned, I warmly suggest that you at least attach a tag with make, model and possibly year and approximate value at least to the most saleable machines and/or those with a significant number of parts to be "cannibalised". If you do this, it would be fairly easy to your family members to sell these goods, and the goods will most probably go to fellow collectors who need them.

Should selling these goods require instead a long work of information gathering by your family in order to understand what each piece is and if it may rise any interest, most probably everything will be dumped due to lack of time, or sold as a stock at a laughable fraction of its value.

As I also appreciate very much your work as a supplier of new gramphone springs, and your needle assortment has to be greatly praised also, in turn I respectfully suggest that sooner or later you pass the information about which factories manufacture these goods for you to someone you trust. If I may suggest a name, Andy (Orchorsol), who also participated in this discussion, is a true gentleman who deserves trust (and he also has experience about dealing with needles). It doesn't necessarily mean that anyone else will have sufficient time/money/space to act as a supplier of parts as you wonderfully do, but at least the information about who still has the machinery to craft these parts will not be lost.

Keep up the good work!