How did your collecting begin?

[operabass78s]

I thought of this when the topic came up on another thread and I figured I'd start something else as to not derail that thread. Whether it be machines or records (or both), what spurned you to begin your collecting/enthusiasm for phonographs and/or records? I'm sure we all have interesting stories and I love when new and younger folks find this hobby.

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I mind as well share my story in this respect. I was 13 and I had just begun getting into opera and happened to find a CD of Caruso's first recordings. Needless to say I was fascinated by the liner notes about the early recording process. A few weeks later I was in a thrift store when I found 2 single-sided Victor recordings, one of which had around a 2" chunk missing. They were "The Rainbow of Love" by John McCormack (the one missing a chunk) and "A Perfect Day" by Alma Gluck. I still have both. I remembered the mention of the "Victor Talking Machine Company" from the Caruso notes and thought they were cool. I took them home and plugged the singer's names into the internet and I came up with Mark Best's besmark.com (where the predecessor to this forum initially was). So I started reading more about the records and machines. A week later I went thrift store hunting and came home with an album full of dance records with the same "Victor" label (the batwing). At the time I remember I didn't have a way to play them so I put them on an old 33 rpm turntable I had, recorded them with the computer mic and then doubled the recording speed on "Windows Sound Recorder". Brought it up to roughly
67 RPM but at least I had an idea of what my records sounded like. It wasn't until a year later I got my hands on an old Califone and could play them at 78 RPM. I had begun looking for a Victrola and found a little VV-VI on ebay for $150. I saved up birthday money and bought it. The day it came in I must have sat with it from dawn till dusk listening to all the records I found. I remember the first I played was Nat M. Wills reciting "No News or "What Killed the Dog". Needless to say at the same time started my infatuation with transferring the records. I first put a computer mic up to the Victrola, then as years progressed my technology advanced. Now I'm 25 and adrift in a sea of records...

[EdiBrunsVic]

Yes, a similar thread was begun a while back, but it is fun to read of the way people got into the hobby.

I was in high school when the interest in the old music got me to check out the 78 rpm records. Going to swap meets, getting records for about a quarter each, and finding the Victor Talking Machine Co. label and realizing it was not like the RCA label (acoustic versus electric recordings). Later, an older lady had a VV-50 for sale for $25. Later, I too acquired the Nat M. Wills record you have. Now I have several hundred records and eight machines. How the time has flown by!

Thanks for sharing the story!

[whoopinola]

I was raised in an ultra conservative Baptist family,where rock&roll was completely forbidden...My music listening was monitered very closely...We must not make god angry , this could lead to dancing!!! Luckily I stumbled upon a stack of dad's old 78s...He was a product of the big band era , so he couldn't possiby object to me listening to them , after all , they were his records! I just about wore them out, but the best in my mind was a handfull of the oldest records in this pile.."Yes Sir that's my Baby" by the Coon-Sanders Original NightHawk Orch. on a Victor , and "Wabash Blues" by Isham Jones Orch on a Brunswick...I was hooked on the 20's..it didn't matter what it was played on....Years later, a fellow who would become my dearest friend introduced me to the Victrola experience...He had a VV-X....Now I was hooked on the complete package . The collection has grown to 35 or so machines and several thousand records , mostly foxtrots of the 20's

[VintageTechnologies]

Several incidents sparked my interest in phonographs from a very young age. Like most children, I had a kiddie phonograph since I was a toddler and was always enthused about records.

Then in 1962 when I was 9 years old, a boy brought a toy phonograph to school for show-and-tell. I had no idea what I was looking at, but was intrigued when I heard it talk. The toy was marketed by the famous Lionel train company. I have attached two pictures to show you what it looked like. As time went on, I forgot about it.

My mom collected antiques and hoped to interest me in some hobby that would keep me out of trouble when I got older (sorry, Mom). One day in 1966 she brought home a couple of Edison Diamond Disks and later two wax cylinders. Remembering the toy, I was again intrigued and wanted to hear these cylinders. Luckily, my mom's cousin had an Edison Standard, so we took the records over and heard them. At that moment, I was bitten by the collecting bug. Mom's cousin would not sell her machine and it did not occur to me that another could be found.

I wrote to the Lionel company about buying their toy phonograph, but it had been discontinued. I resolved that if I could not find the replica, then I would find the real thing! My parents finally located a nice Edison Home when I was 13, and I still have it today. From there, my collection has grown to dozens of machines and thousands of records.

[VintageTechnologies]

I was raised in an ultra conservative Baptist family,where rock&roll was completely forbidden...My music listening was monitered very closely...We must not make god angry , this could lead to dancing!!!

I'm sorry, I can't let this comment pass without telling one of my favorite jokes. Do you know why Baptists make Whoopee only lying down? So that no one could ever accuse them of dancing!

[epigramophone]

In the mid-1950's my parents were making the change from 78 to LP. Apart from "The Teddy Bears Picnic" by Jay Wilbur on Rex, bought for my amusement, their collection was entirely classical.

I was given my father's old Micro-Perophone "Grippa" portable, and as works on 78 were replaced by LP's, the 78's came my way. Word of my interest got around the family, and soon I was the beneficiary of more redundant records and machines from various aunts and uncles. I well remember the HMV 251 horizontal grand which I exhumed from my uncle's barn. Parental pressure and the discovery of woodworm soon disposed of that one.

Even my younger brother got in on the act. He was a cub scout at the time, and was helping at one of their jumble sales where he found an HMV 130. He bought it for ten shillings and made a killing by selling it on to me for one pound!

Happy days!

[Orchorsol]

Some of my story is here: http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... 11&t=11979

From as young as I can remember I was obsessed with records... When I was 9 a family friend gave me a very early electrical machine with one of the first Garrard auto-change decks, but I never had the autochange spindle. I bought 78s wherever I could, at junk shops mostly. I kind of left 78s behind in my teens but then got the bug again in my 20s.

[Valecnik]

My great grandmother bought an oak Victrola XI used. My grandmother inherited it when she died and it's since been passed to an uncle. We played it all the time as small kids, poorly jerry rigging various repairs and, I'm afraid to say, using those same needles over and over on records ranging from the teens to the 50s.

At some point, the spring broke and governor too I think, (probably saving a lot of records in the process).

Years later, I had it professionally repaired, had the repro bought new needles for it as a gift for my grandmother but I don't think it was ever played much after that.

[dutchman]

I'm 72 - Started when I was in Pakistan (Islamabad) with the Embassy in 1970-73. A friend on a driving trip to Afghanistan (Kabul) for vacation stayed with us for several days -- as a token of his appreciation he bought me a franken machine with a beautiful horn off a street vendor. The vendor had a strap holding the machine which allowed him to play the machine. The vendor had a monkey, in costume, after playing a record the monkey would pass its little cup around and beg for a donation. My friend never told me what he paid for the machine but figured the street vendor could probably retire... I still have the machine in my collection which has grown to 55+.

That started my collecting.

[FloridaClay]

I guess I have been interested in phonographs and records for as long as I can remember. My parents gave me a small portable 78 player as a child. I can remember visiting great aunts who shared an apartment during WWII who had a table-model electric radio phonograph and when I visited them I loved to climb up on something to reach it and play their 78s. In later years that progressed to my own “hi-fi” sets, then component stereos, then CD players, iPods etc.

When I retired in 2005 I had finally had time to explore some things that had always interested me; first antique music boxes, then some old Atwater Kent radios (I had a memory of seeing on in my grandfather’s barn long ago). Then on an antiquing trip with my stepmother in Tennessee I stumbled across an Edison Amberola 50 and was intrigued. I got the bug and started reading books about antique phonographs and found this Forum. This has led to, at the moment, 13 phonographs (Victor, Columbia, Edison, and Pathé). I am right now awating a cabinet maker to arrive whom I have hired to reinforce some shelving units I have to hold around 700 or so 78s. (I believe that they do indeed multiply at night in the dark while I am asleep.)

Clay