Phonograph Museum Fundraiser

[Dustie89]

Hi

Some of you may be familiar with the project I've spent over two years on now. I poured a lot of my personal time into finding machines and creating the museum. There are three of us who have put it together.

Heres the website: phonoINC.WordPress.com

The museum is growing I'm proud to say, and I hope you enjoy browsing through the machines on the website. I want to take the next step and make the museum worth wild. I enjoy teaching people about our hobby. I've started an online fundraiser on Indiegogo.com, and I have a short video on there showcasing the museum I hope you enjoy. Donations are appreciated, but spreading the word through Facebook, social media, email, etc... Is truely needed as well. I've attached the link below.

Hope you enjoy seeing the machines in the collection.

Thanks
Dustin Ellis
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/phon ... 11643741#/

[Phonofreak]

Dustin, I wish you the best of luck. I hope your museum will grow and prosper. What a worthwhile project.
Harvey Kravitz

[Dustie89]

Thanks Harvey. Hope things are going good your way.

[snallast]

Great initiative, I wish you all the best and hope you can get that building for the Museum, which looks great!

[Starkton]

You are surprisingly young and I applaude what you and your fellow collectors get going. As you already observed, the phonograph hobby is now dominated by the older generation, the baby-boomers. We have the time and we have the money to maintain a late bloom of this hobby before it collapses. You nailed it on your website: "In a convention room of over a hundred collectors, myself and one other person was under the age of forty." As almost all of todays phonograph enthusiasts started collecting at the age of under thirty, you can figure out the future of our hobby - at least "in the wild".

Many phonograph and record collections will need a good home, because the baby-boomers are increasingly dropping out. A network of local museums, exactly like yours, is therefore needed to preserve the memory before it is gone.

[Valecnik]

Good luck with your worthy pursuit Dustin! A worthy one indeed.

I shared the information on my Facebook page. You can see it, (hopefully) here.

https://www.facebook.com/Cylinderphonograph

Hopefully it generates some additional interest!

[brianu]

You are surprisingly young and I applaude what you and your fellow collectors get going. As you already observed, the phonograph hobby is now dominated by the older generation, the baby-boomers. We have the time and we have the money to maintain a late bloom of this hobby before it collapses. You nailed it on your website: "In a convention room of over a hundred collectors, myself and one other person was under the age of forty." As almost all of todays phonograph enthusiasts started collecting at the age of under thirty, you can figure out the future of our hobby - at least "in the wild".

Many phonograph and record collections will need a good home, because the baby-boomers are increasingly dropping out. A network of local museums, exactly like yours, is therefore needed to preserve the memory before it is gone.

I believe there are a lot more people out there interested in these machines than you might think. Of the 25 or so that I've sold over the past year or two, almost all went to people below 50, and more than half went to people below 40, some below 30, and one buyer - who already had a couple machines - was still in high school. I'll add that few of these people had ever been to a show and none of them found me through this forum, nor do they seem to post here. I think often one's sense of a hobby, or those to whom it may appeal, becomes too easily skewed by his/her subjective experiences... at shows, or forums like these... venues that many people interested in these machines, discs and cylinders for whatever reason don't really tend to bother with.

That said, museums are always nice... especially if they're more centrally located than that otherwise really impressive collection at the Johnson museum in Delaware.

[alang]

That said, museums are always nice... especially if they're more centrally located than that otherwise really impressive collection at the Johnson museum in Delaware.

Well, the Johnson Victrola Museum is located centrally in the capital city of Delaware in walking distance from the legislative buildings, how much more central do you want to get?

Andreas

[brianu]

That said, museums are always nice... especially if they're more centrally located than that otherwise really impressive collection at the Johnson museum in Delaware.

Well, the Johnson Victrola Museum is located centrally in the capital city of Delaware in walking distance from the legislative buildings, how much more central do you want to get?

Andreas

hmm... you're right... well, my vacation time is already gone so I'll have to remember to stop in the next time I'm down on legislative business.

[Dustie89]

Thank all of you for your support. I agree there are a lot of "closet collectors" out there. I've had individuals contact me and they have amazing collections, though they have never been to a show and do not know there is a much larger collecting community. I enjoy finding those collectors and helping them.