Pathé records

[reverendpen]

I was at a record store today and came across a nice condition Pathé 78. It was the brow mottled type. I forget who / what was actually recorded. I do not have a Pathé player so I passed it up. My question is they had a price on it at $15.00. I have no idea what they cost. What is a typical cost for Pathé records? The writing on the label was English so I think it was not a French pressing though I could be wrong.

[victorIIvictor]

The Pathé record you saw with the black and brown "mottled" color to the disc surface is a conventional lateral cut record, produced around 1926-27 in the USA. Under the word "Pathé" in smaller type appears the word "Actuelle," which was originally a label name in its own right for lateral cut records produced by Pathé Frères in the USA and England, and perhaps elsewhere. In 1922, Pathé Frères in the USA was reorganized as the Pathé Phonograph and Radio Corporation, and this successor company only produced lateral cut records. The Pathé Actuelle label lasted in the US until 1930. Its lower cost sister label, Perfect, also only produced laterally cut records, and was produced from 1922 until April 1938 (not counting postwar revivals of the Perfect label name, of which there was at least one).

There is no "typical cost" for Pathé records… It is all a matter of how rare and desirable a given title is, and of course the record's condition. No doubt the record store chose to charge a little bit more because of the unusual appearance of the record you saw.

Best wishes, Mark