The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Cody,

Given your scenario, I wouldn't feel too bad about it. I've been to many, (too many?), auctions where there are literally dozens of junk floor model phonographs, all lined up, sitting crooked on 3 legs, lids all askew, punched out speaker grills, peeling veneer, that will never be restored. There's just too many of them and we all have tons of projects with higher interest.

90 percent of these machines get parted out and the cabinets scrapped and/or burned. Right or wrong, that's just how it is.

Now, parting out a nice, viable phonograph of some actual value and high collectability, just because the sum of its parts is of greater value than the whole assembled machine, is a terrible waste, driven by greed, with no appreciation for history. You can draw parallels here to many of societies troubling trends today but, we'll just stick with phonographs for now.

My 2 cents anyway...

"It makes money!"

Is the implied message here that because "it makes money!", it must be o.k.?

If so, that's a sad statement. Many years ago, I took my Godson to a 1928 era theater that still has its organ. They play the organ and show old films. He loved it but had to ask, "how much is that organ worth". I explained that it's not really worth very much since only very few people could ever own it, due to its size and how difficult it would be to remove and re-install. He seemed disappointed and then asked, "If it isn't worth much, then why do those people work so hard to keep it going?" I asked him, "did you enjoy the music and have a good time?" He answered that he did and so I told him, "then that's why they do it and that's its true worth".

What something is worth is not always measured in dollar signs.

The ability of some act to make money does not make that act inherently good and right. At least it shouldn't...

Again, my 2 cents...

JerryVan wrote:"It makes money!"

Is the implied message here that because "it makes money!", it must be o.k.?

Jerry, in a word, no. I think you would look long and hard before finding such a sentiment here. Recognition of the reality of the existence of such a motion among some is not an expression of approval in this context. Rather the practice is regularly, and widely, condemned.

Clay

Thanks, folks, for the responses...and the kind words. I felt as if what I did was all right, but it still had me wondering after the fact where the tipping point should be. I was casually collecting cylinder phonographs and external-horn disc players as a teenager in the late 'sixties, when most cabinet phonos weren't considered worthy of much attention. I stopped collecting by the early 'seventies, when I discovered, well, sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll (etc.), and I haven't thought much about phonographs again until this year.

Fast forward forty years, cabinet phonos are getting toward or beyond the century mark (by an odd coincidence, I'm older, too!) and are more appreciated. I guess my feeling is, just about any machine that can be brought back to original or near-original condition should be, so that it can survive a second hundred years. As has been pointed out, every situation is unique and has its own solution.

I'd been vaguely aware of the seller(s) on eBay parting out perfectly viable machines, but this thread has made me take a closer look and -- yeesh! That's just completely barbaric.

The machine that Soundgen points out -- worm-eaten under the case covering -- raises some issues, I think. I seem to see numerous phonographs being sold in the UK with wood-worm damage. We don't have wood-worms in the US (northeast, anyway), so I've never encountered this problem. Are they really so common in the UK (and I'd presume, Europe as well)? Do they infest furniture in normal household conditions, or are they the result of long storage in sub-optimal storage conditions like, say, a barn, basement, or a damp garden shed? Can fumigation kill them off completely enough to trust a cabinet, once infested, not to spread worms to other phonographs (or other furniture) in a collection? It seems like the presence of worms might be a very good reason to condemn a phonograph. Moreover, in these days of global eBay sales and shipping, is it possible that a North American (for example) collection could be endangered by an ill-advised purchase from overseas? (I've been gradually reading lots of the posts on the forum, working backwards from 2009, and I've seen worms mentioned, but I'm unaware of any thread that goes into the problem in detail. If there is one, and someone would be kind enough to point it out, I guess that would be preferable to re-answering these questions.) To me, worm infestation would seem to be Deal Breaker #1, except maybe in the case of an especially rare or significant machine.

Meanwhile, the thread Soundgen posted yesterday in the "alerts" forum ("Start a gramophone business?") with several pictures like the one below, makes me feel like a first-class tyro, and I'm just gonna hang up the chain saw while I'm ahead of the game. (Seriously, what's the story here, do you think? Is this the work of the King of All Opportunists, or were these parts salvaged from every single known worm-infested Euro-machine in a massive mission of mercy? All it has in English is: "HERE ARE OVER 500 MOSTLY COMPLETE GRAMOPHONE MOTORS, NO WINDERS WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET THIS IS A ONCE ONLY OPPORTUNITY TO GET ALL THE PARTS FOR OLD GRAMOPHONES, IF COLLECTED THERE WILL BE 300 TURNTABLES FOR FREE.")(Caps in the original, and for once, justified I think. )