The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I picked up about 200 records this tonight and being that I am still pretty new to the phonograph world, just wanted to post some pictures to get any input as to whether or not they have much value. Any information would be great! Thanks!

It probably depends what's on them, but generally these are $1 records. It's really only the very early Japanese & Chinese Berliners, Victors/G&T, Columbias etc that are worth anything.
These records made in the teens right through to the 1950's are just like ours, and many many thousands were pressed & still survive. The Columbia's are extremely common in fact. A "valuable" title/artist on the labels pictured would only be in the $5-$10 range.

The stripped grooves on the record in the second photo would severly devalue it in any case. Won't be much fun to listen to either, sorry.

SonnyPhono,

Very neat labels and sleeve nonetheless. Thanks for sharing them.

Regards,
John

SonnyPhono,

Could you take a larger image of the text of the first label and the bottom of the sleeve?

I was trying to figure out what it says, but the top line seems to be gibberish.

ドーコレ 印ルツ (directions for Windows users to get their computer to properly display the previous text) would read ‘Dookore Inrutsu’, which, with the exception of 印 (‘In’—stamp; seal; mark; imprint; symbol; emblem; trademark) is written in katakana, indicating that it is some foreign word written phonetically. For the life of me, I cannot come up with anything that would make sense, and my dictionary isn’t helping.

I’ll see if I can figure out the Columbia later.

Interestingly enough, a Google search for 印ルツ only finds a Yahoo! auction for this record:

— MordEth

I'm actually wondering if that record belongs in that cover. The cover looks a lot older than the disc to me.

That disc of "China Night" is probably backed by "Tokyo Boogie Woogie", a record that turns up here in the US ALL the time. It's entertaining to listen to once or twice, but very common. It seems like it was popular with all the GIs stationed in Japan, seems all of them brought at least one copy home with them since I see it everywhere...

Sean

That's great information! I was hoping I found a couple of rare ones but I guess not.

There were dozens of records that had white labels and said "Not for sale - promotional Dee Jay record" made by Columbia, Vitor, etc. Are they of any value? I wouldn't imagine but thought I would ask. Thanks again!

Here is a better picture of the record:

gramophoneshane wrote:I'm actually wondering if that record belongs in that cover. The cover looks a lot older than the disc to me.

Shane, you're right that the record doesn't belong with that sleeve, although I’m not sure if your reason is correct. You may be right about the record being older than the sleeve, but the record is definitely printed in Chinese and the sleeve is Japanese.

The more complicated characters in Japanese (e.g. 印 ‘In’—stamp; seal; mark; imprint; symbol; emblem; trademark) were taken from Chinese, but they added 2 simpler character sets called katakana (which makes up the rest of the first line on the sleeve and is used for words taken from other languages) and hiragana (used for conjugation and simple words like ‘of’—e.g., の ‘no’, which is the third character above ‘China Night’ on the Columbia label, means ‘of’) that are not used in Chinese.

I still haven’t looked up the kanji in the Columbia label yet, though.

— MordEth

Variations of that "China Night" record turn up fairly frequently. I suspect since my copy is sung in phonetic english it was brought here in the postwar years as a souvenir.