78 records still get a bad reputation.

[Edisonfan]

Yes, I agree.

[Wolfe]

Those coasters would be a good use for the broken records that we all see...but to use nice 78's for that just makes me sick.

Well, let's face it, there's literally tons of Mitch Miller and Frankie Yankovic et. al. 78's around that aren't worth anything , never will be worth anything, so it doesn't bother me in that regard.

If they're destroying more unique or rare items, that's something else.

[Edisonfan]

True!

[Wolfe]

I once turned a near mint Robert Johnson 78 into a jellybean bowl. But that was before I knew better.

Wish I had that record back, now.

[Edisonfan]

OUCH!

I'm still looking for a Robert Johnson.

[Lucius1958]

I think we can safely blame W. Heath Robinson (the 'British Rube Goldberg', as he has been called over here) for originating the idea of re-purposing records back in the '30s....

"It is rather chastening to report that he, alone among men, has found a use for... old gramophone records..... Take tea with him, and you will receive your currant bun from a shapely cake-stand constructed almost entirely of of old double-sided fox-trots and cornet solos, now happily silent forever. Should you feel the heat, you will be offered an obsolete violin concerto, cunningly adapted for use as a fan. Hats, hand-bags, card-trays, even perambulator-wheels - these are but a few of the reincarnations in which old gramophone records are liable to appear if Mr. Heath Robinson is anywhere about.

(Even his garden spade, I understand, was once the First Movement of an oratorio which, when performed at the Albert Hall in 1912, evoked shrill paeans from the critics and was faintly audible in Bayswater.)"

[dd2u]

It gets worse:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ssh5qznryRc

I love the way that people claim to be using "unplayable records" because they KNOW what they are doing is wrong. Those records look to be in mint condition to me. I suppose any record is unplayable if you only own a CD player. Great Excuse.

[CptBob]

I feel slightly queasy. I've just sold 120 78s on Ebay to a cake stand maker. I won't put a link, because I've given him positive feedback and he's given me the same. It was a perfect transaction. He came the next day to pick them up, he gave me the cash £6.00, which was spent the same evening in The White Horse at Maplehurst, so I have no complaints, either about the transaction or the beer. But it was the way he said "I'll find a good use for them" with a slightly mocking tone that made me wonder, and then look up the rest of the stuff he had for sale - and I saw them! I don't think he'll sell very many at £12.99, it only stands to reason, you can buy the central spindle for £2.99 on ebay.

To be honest it was my own fault. I foolishly bought 600 records on ebay, and in answer to the fairly reasonable question, "where are you going to keep them?" I said, I'll put them in the conservatory, sort them out and get rid of what I don't want by the spring. There was virtually nothing I wanted amongst them, but I've had a reasonably pleasant time sorting them out and decided to put them back onto ebay in vague categories - like 1950s vocalists. I wouldn't bid on that, but someone bid 99p and not the cake stand maker. I hope there's somthing there that he wants. Anyway, the cakes will be standing on a lot of vocalists from the 30s and 40s, people like Donald Peers, Richard Tauber, Robert Wilson etc, and 1950s instrumental and light orchestral music like Mareck Weber etc etc. They were all in reasonable playable condition.

That'll teach me for bidding on ebay late at night after a couple of drinks!