The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

George, thanks for the Edison dealer bulletin. Will add that to my stash of keepers.

Clay

Two reference sources I have confirm 1921 as the beginning year for paper labels.

Clay

I dont beleive the "red star" is correct!, my favorite DD record ive ever heard and hope to own (hard hearted hannah by vernon dalheart) is a red star record and as i say!, its my favorite

kirtley2012 wrote:I dont beleive the "red star" is correct!, my favorite DD record ive ever heard and hope to own (hard hearted hannah by vernon dalheart) is a red star record and as i say!, its my favorite

A great record. The red star business is correct, but often the Edison crew was way off base in its predictions about what the public wanted. One of the things that led to the company's downfall.

Clay

i meant to say not good, but very true!

Here's a photo of the etched label DD to which I'm referring: I've tweaked the photo as much as I can to show up the star (it's just above the spindle hole, at approximately 11 o'clock).

Bill

phonogfp wrote:The more I thought about "Flashes," the less confident I became in my previous post. I dug out an issue of The Antique Phonograph Monthly from 1982 which reproduced the dealer bulletin below. I was incorrect about the "Flash" terminology, and will edit my earlier post to avoid future confusion. I should have cited "General Group." Anyway, we can all read the explanation below:

George P.

"Read and Filed" as instructed!

Lucious1959, I'm thinking the star on your record may not be the star as the ones I've seen on paper labels are pretty large. They are about an inch and a half across and appear as if they were stamped with a rubber stamper using red ink.

I started collecting DDS When I was 11 years old, and when I saw the red star, I thought that the owner or some carnival was playing around with a red stamp on them, and later on started noticing that many DDs from other places had them too and thought they must be something the factory did. I think the George Frow DD book mentions the slow seller designation, information.

This is a very education thread if I do say so myself! Last night I re-visited my pretty large DD collection which I cataloged early this year using a lot of paper Disc-O-Files. I found 112 red star records last night. But now I have opened up another big can of worms. I have found several different varieties of the "etched labels" some without Edison's profile and some with. Some very plain jane with only the name Edison and the song title and catalog number, etc. But I also found two early etched DD that are ½ inch smaller then the rest of my collection. I never noticed this before until last night. They are both etched with his profile but are smaller than the rest. Was the factory making them smaller early on or did they shrink from age? (kidding yet serious) ?????