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I'll tell you how much it was for me, and it's more than I'd like to admit. I've broken two black wax cylinders and four 78 rpm records, one of which was an early Zonophone and another was my favorite wax cylinder recording. Hopefully I'm not the only clumsy phono collector out there!

-Steve

"How many records have you broken in your lifetime?"


Way too many to count. Some accidental, others on purpose. What is better to shoot with a BB gun when you're a kid? (besides your eye of course)

Quite a few, over 30-odd years of handling 78's. Mainly when I've had stacks of records loitering about that I was intending to sort. Sometimes the ones on or near the bottom have broken. Haven't broken many by dropping them, however. The ones that I have dropped will more often than not survive the trip to a carpeted floor.

I have a large plastic bucket under the cabinet that I discard truly worthless 78's into. Sometime the poor castoffs break when they land in there. But they're mostly too worn out or damaged to be of any use anyway, which is why then end up there.

Not including intentionally breaking already damaged, worn, or otherwise unusable records...

78s - 2
Cylinders - 0

Wine was to blame both times...

When I was a kid, growing up in Whiting, IN, my brothers and I used to watch re-runs of the Three Stooges on TV.

With 7 kids, my parents were rather poor, so we would go hunting for discarded toys in the alley behind our house. Seemed like after Christmas or birthdays we would always have good luck. We would take old broken toys and fix them, and now they were new to us!

One summer day, we found boxes of albums of old phonograph records. Of course we immediately became Stooges and started breaking the records over each other’s heads! (They also made good Frisbees).

I often wonder what great, rare, or desirable titles we destroyed! But hey, we had a blast!

Cheers, Bob S.

I broke the very first cylinder record I ever tried to play, "In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree" on Edison 2M wax. I wasn't sure how the record fit on the mandrel, but I figured that the "wide" end of the record would be near the top of the box so that you could put it on the mandrel without touching the playing surface. Surprise!

I kept that broken cylinder and later used it as a prop in my German class. While demonstrating my Edison Home to the class, I talked about how fragile the wax records were and crushed the already destroyed record in my bare hand. You should have seen the looks on everyone's faces!

52089 wrote: I kept that broken cylinder and later used it as a prop in my German class. While demonstrating my Edison Home to the class, I talked about how fragile the wax records were and crushed the already destroyed record in my bare hand. You should have seen the looks on everyone's faces!

Oh that is hilarious! Maybe I should do that with my broken cylinders... maybe play a prank on my history teacher?

-Steve

During the many years that I have been collecting records, I have broken about seven records. Sadly, several have been favorites.

I continue to enjoy the records I do have and strive to be careful with them.

A few days ago, I took my VV-2-55 to school again and played records for some second grade students. It was fun to see their reaction to the Victrola and how it played a record (Orthophonic Records, of course).

I've been collecting 78s since I was pretty young, when my grandmother gave me some. But in all those years only 6..

HisMastersVoice wrote:Not including intentionally breaking already damaged, worn, or otherwise unusable records...

78s - 2
Cylinders - 0

Wine was to blame both times...

Thats not bad at all....got to love the wine.