Requiescat in pace - Charlie Martin

[DrGregC]

It is with great sadness that I tell our antique phonograph community that we have lost a friend, one of the true icons of our hobby, Charlie Martin. Charlie ran one of the few storefront locations in Bristol, PA, where he bought, sold, and expertly repaired all types of talking machines. More importantly, "The Place" was the place where friends could meet to talk phonographs, music, and history. Charlie was a gentle giant. Always warm and welcoming. There are many who knew him better, but I will miss him and his influence greatly.

The details are included in his obituary: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/philly ... =173579934

When Charlie closed the store in 2007, he allowed me to take pictures to document "The Place" and its place in history. http://youtu.be/Nvm8Y-BQRIA

[EdiBrunsVic]

That was a wonderful video! Thank you so much for sharing and yes he will be missed.

[brianu]

this is really sad. I used to spend hours at a time, at least one day, if not two, a week, at charlie's... he was one of the most generous people I've met in this hobby with his time and knowledge... you could hang out with him almost endlessly in his backroom workshop both searching through the stacks and piles of parts and projects and just watching and learning, to a background soundtrack of the music or words from his radio regularly punctuated by the pounds and bangs on the ceiling above from the weights being dropped by the lifters at the gym upstairs.

I was also always happy to spend way too much there knowing that the machines he sold were restored perfectly and offered at some of the most fair prices I've ever seen. and he was honest to a fault... people often brought in random machines just looking to get rid of them, and once someone brought in a filthy XVII... so charlie paid him accordingly and set it in that backroom... a few days later, while cleaning off the layers of filth and muck and looking more closely at it, he realized, right, it's a much more valuable XVIII (which cleaned up beautifully, mind you)... so what did he do? he called back the seller, told him of his mistake, and gave him some more money to make up the difference in value.

charlie was just awesome.

[gemering]

A true gentleman.
Friendly, honest, and kind to a fault.
Charlie will be sorely missed.

Gene

[fmblizz]

Charlie

As others have reiterated, he was a special guy to me and many others in the phonograph world. Living in South Jersey I had no problem blowing off a day to visit his shop in Bristol and just BS for a couple hours.

He always had time for anyone stopping by to help further educate them about this hobby of our. Is knowledge was invaluable when it came to repairing mechanism on any machine. In his later years he was not focused at all on making money in his business called 'THE PLACE' but more on getting younger people interested in collecting and restoring. On numerous occasions he would just give me a part that I needed to get things running and say "Don't worry about it". Those of you that know him will remember that dingy back room/shop just loaded with part..

I can easily say Floyd Silvers and Charlie Martin are totally responsible for my passion in collecting these things called Talking Machines.

He will be missed by many and I'm so happy we became friends.

RIP

Gary Blizzard