Buying blue amberol & other celluloid cylinders

[mjbarnes]

Recently I have thought I should buy records, as I have enough machines and space is limited for me as for everybody. Groups of blue amberols show up on Facebook Marketplace. Sometimes 30, sometimes 150. My question is how much to pay? I am excluding here records which have a recognized high collectible value. For a run of the mill grouping there may be only one or two, maybe 3 or 4 records I am going to enjoy listening to repeatedly. So how to go in and offer? Say: I only want to pay you $30 because I only really want a few of these? How are collectors approaching sellers these days?

[Stephen_Madara]

buy only the ones you want even if you have to pay more. its just like 78's i usually don't take any when i buy a phonograph just extra baggage to haul

[52089]

At the phonograph shows I have attended, common BA cylinders are usually priced at $3-$5 each your choice, with discounts typically offered if you buy 5, 10, or more.

For bulk buys, say 50 or more, dealer's choice, I would expect to pay perhaps $2-$3 each, perhaps a little less if they don't have boxes.

This is strictly for "common" Blue Amberols. Wax cylinders and non-Edison cylinders in general will cost more.

[epigramophone]

When I buy a job lot of BA's I keep the ones I want and sell the rest on eBay. If they are of no great value I list them in groups of up to six by genre. The cost of postage makes listing cylinders singly an expensive business for the buyer.
Unlike 78's, BA's are light and easy to pack for postage. I have never had a single breakage.

[jamiegramo]

When I buy a job lot of BA's I keep the ones I want and sell the rest on eBay. If they are of no great value I list them in groups of up to six by genre. The cost of postage makes listing cylinders singly an expensive business for the buyer.
Unlike 78's, BA's are light and easy to pack for postage. I have never had a single breakage.

I believe I recently bought one of your groups on eBay!

Since I bought my Amberola I have struggled to find records to play on it that I like. I have never found a blue amberol in the wild here in Britain and have had to buy small selections of titles I think I might like at fairs from dealers (now retired). Maybe in a lot of ten I will only find one or two titles that I actually like when playing them. As Howard Hope once told me a selection of blue amberols is often ‘turgid’.

Fortunately on eBay you can look up the titles on google and hear them on YouTube before buying them. The UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive is an excellent website for hearing most of these cylinders by just entering the cylinder number in its search feature.

Even so there are as little as 30, maybe less, blue amberol listings on eBay UK. Not like the thousands available in the US.

[mjbarnes]

Hear hear! The ability to play digital versions of old records before buying saves a lot of wasted time and money. Edison apparently favoured the civil war era ballads of his youth. They sound pretty slow nowadays though the melodies can be pretty. And I hate the racist stuff: still lots of it in circulation.