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Can anyone identify this embossed 'His Maters Voice'
I picked it up from Spain. It has definite old age patina and is flatter an more rectangular than a British item?

It's a very crude Indian Repro from the 1990s

soundgen wrote:It's a very crude Indian Repro from the 1990s

Thanks for confirming I did wonder.

flying500 wrote:

soundgen wrote:It's a very crude Indian Repro from the 1990s

Thanks for confirming I did wonder.

This is what they were trying to copy , Victor and HMV tins , they are always in pretty poor condition originally gilded !

When do the original embossed tins above date from?
Was the HMV version produced by G&T or The Gramophone Co?

This is what the very first Gramophone Co / G&T tin looks like. they came out in 1902-3.

Thanks GS.
Interesting they used the Nipper logo here before their records and machines.
Or did they import them from USA and simply rebadged them as a G&T product either on the tins underside or paper liner?
My G&T tin is very similar to the common ones use through the teens and twenties, except the underside states Gramophone & Typewriter Co instead of The Gramophone Co, so must date from fairly late before the name change?

While on the subject of embossed tins, does anyone know approximately when the common embossed aluminium HMV tins with the match striker where introduced and discontinued?
I'm guessing they are probably mid 30's but would have stopped making them when aluminium became a metal reserved for the war effort?

The original G & T tins were made of 'white metal', actually tinplate, which when new is bright like nickel, but goes dull quite quickly. This was delayed by giving them a coat of varnish, which goes yellow with age (may even have been yellow originally); they were not gilt.

Ruth Edge and Leonard Petts, 'The Collectors Guide to His Master's Voice Nipper Souvenirs' tells all about the needle tins -- although they make no mention of the embossed tin with the words 'His Master's Voice'.

The aluminium tins had a very short life, 1923-4. They were obviously adapted snuff tins, with a match strike on the base (no, you don't need a match strike to take snuff, but snuff tins were often so equipped, nonetheless).

Oedipus wrote:The original G & T tins were made of 'white metal', actually tinplate, which when new is bright like nickel, but goes dull quite quickly. This was delayed by giving them a coat of varnish, which goes yellow with age (may even have been yellow originally); they were not gilt.

Ruth Edge and Leonard Petts, 'The Collectors Guide to His Master's Voice Nipper Souvenirs' tells all about the needle tins -- although they make no mention of the embossed tin with the words 'His Master's Voice'.

The aluminium tins had a very short life, 1923-4. They were obviously adapted snuff tins, with a match strike on the base (no, you don't need a match strike to take snuff, but snuff tins were often so equipped, nonetheless).

OK not gilded but they were bright gold finish whatever that was , I had one once which had almost half the finish on it . it is the same finish as can be seen on any later HMV tin such as this

Oedipus wrote:
The aluminium tins had a very short life, 1923-4.

I'm quite surprised they are so early, and made for no more than 2 years, especially considering the amount of survivers around today.
Then again, the number of packets Gram Co sold in its territory around the world in any given year must have been staggering.


I'd always (wrongfully) assumed there'd be a chronological order to the materials used such as tin, aluminium, paper (WWII), tin again, then plastic, but obviously not.
I wonder what prompted the change to aluminium only to abandon it no more than 2 yrs later?

Might they had been made and sold alongside regular tins as some sort of promotion/gimmick, or simply for personal choice?
There was obviously periods where you could buy an ordinary tin of needles, or something fancier like the early wooden Gram-o-phone box, or later round nickelled version

Whatever the reason, I'm glad we collectors/horders of these items have such a wide variety of styles, types, shapes, sizes, tones, colour and design variations to keep it interesting.