Over this past weekend I made a long trip to look at some items. I ended up buying a few cylinders (see pic below) to add to my collection and a couple of horns. In the bottom of one of the wooden crates of cylinders was this cylinder. It was not in a box to protect it but instead was rather carelessly wrapped up in early cotton batting like what is found inside the earlier style Edison 2 minute wax cylinder boxes. You can imagine my surprise at finding that it was in nice condition. I've never found an original of this cylinder and now after more than 25 years of collecting I finally have one.
Doug,
Nice find. It's great to find something desirable and rare in a bunch of stuff.Great haul. A few years ago, I had a similar experience. I responded to a Craigslist add in Seattle, WA. The seller was selling 160 BA's for $100.00. I went over there after my VA appointment, and I looked through about 5 and bought them right there. I wanted to keep a straight face. The first 5 were great titles. When I got home, I looked through the rest of them. One of the records was Let Us Not Forget, the short version. Unfortunately, It didn't have the machining lid. Oh well, you can't have it all. The money I paid for the lot was basically the price of the Let Us Not Forget cylinder. Congrats on your find.
Harvey Kravitz
Thanks Harvey. Yours was a great find as well! I had not expected anything very interesting in this group as the first 10 or 20 cylinders I sampled were fairly common titles but I took a chance anyway and bought the entire group. It was only after returning home (my car was full from front passenger seat to trunk) that I discovered a few hidden gems. In this group also were some nice condition and extremely uncommon brown wax cylinders including "Uncle Josh At The Statue Of Liberty" and "Uncle Josh And The Paw Paw Railroad". I have owned "Uncle Josh At A Raines Law Hotel" and a number of his other brown wax cylinders for many years but I've never found either of these early Uncle Josh brown wax cylinders. With these last 2 early Uncle Josh cylinders I believe I have most (maybe 95%) of all of Cal Stewart's Uncle Josh cylinder records. Still searching for a couple of his Berliner records that elude me!
What a nice trove. It is what keeps us all poking around on Craigslist, at estate sales, etc. Stuff is still out there and now and then lightening strikes!
Clay
Arthur W. J. G. Ord-Hume's Laws of Collecting
1. Space will expand to accommodate an infinite number of possessions, regardless of their size.
2. Shortage of finance, however dire, will never prevent the acquisition of a desired object, however improbable its cost.
Yes, this is the "I am the Edison Phonograph..." recording by Len Spencer that was distributed only to Edison Phonograph dealers circa 1906 (I believe). Originals of the cylinder like this are very uncommon. My assumption in the case of this group of cylinders is that several of them including this one were from an Edison dealer as I have found several real nice condition copies of the same 2 minute wax cylinders in the group.
marcapra wrote:Great find! I have a rare Edison cylinder myself that I would trade you for it, namely, "Uncle Josh in a Chinese laundry".
Thanks marcapra. I'm going to hold onto the Edison Advertising cylinder for a while. I have Uncle Josh In A Chinese Laundry on cylinder but I am looking for original cylinder recordings of Uncle Josh At The Stock Exchange and Uncle Josh In Wall Street.
I've never seen one of those in person. Congratulations!
Nice haul, by the way. It's nice to see more proof that there are still hidden stashes out there waiting to be discovered. I started to lose hope until last summer when I acquired the contents of an appliance repair shop that was open from the mid 1920s through the mid 1980s, then sat shuttered and undisturbed until 2013. Pretty much everything in the basement was pre-1940.
That is indeed a great find and welcome to the quite exclusive club of Edison Advertising Record owners!
With yours I am now aware of five existing originals all together. Assuming that there might be around 15 left worldwide, this is indeed an extreme rarity. Keep it safe and only play it as few times as possible, if ever.
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but instead was rather carelessly wrapped up in early cotton batting like what is found inside the earlier style Edison 2 minute wax cylinder boxes. You can imagine my surprise at finding that it was in nice condition. I've never found an original of this cylinder and now after more than 25 years of collecting I finally have one.
