The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Nice haul...

Congrats..!!!

Old Star Wars toys and a Nixon Innaug sign to boot!

)

Tony K.

Edison Collector/Restorer

Also, I'm sure you'll find something good in those black boxes.

Garret

marcapra wrote:classical 78s, which take up a whole room, and I need that room to put some machines in. The problem is how to get rid of them. They are too nice to throw away and you can't even give them away to most collectors. These are those big albums from the 1930s and 1940s with conductors like Toscanini, Walter, Beecham, Koussevitsky, Rodzinski, Stokowski, Ormandy, Mitropoulous, and composers from Bach to Wagner. The record labels are mostly Victor, Columbia, and Decca. I could donate them to GoodWill, but will they even know what to do with them? The local library will not take them. If I donate to GoodWill, they will probably go straight to the dumpster, but I will at least get a tax write off.

They might try to sell them online

http://www.shopgoodwill.com/search/Sear ... llerStore=


Although the action around this part of the Goodwill site seems pretty sleepy. They might at least make it to here before the dumpster.

I'm always interested in looking at classical albums and might buy a few here and there if they're earlier (like Victor Scroll sets) or unique in some way from all the real common ones. But I agree, they are largely unloved.

I like the common classical sets to play on my Brunswick Cortez. They sound very good on it and they are inexpensive.

Thank you very much for this grab-as-much-as-you-can free record hoard report! From now on, everytime I may want to look at something that will never, absolutely never should even the sky fall, happen in Italy in general and to myself specifically, I know that all I'll have to do will just be to come back to this thread!

Jokes aside, I somehow pity the man who lived there. Dying without even a relative or a friend or a neighbour taking care of your things, reselling them or at least giving them for free to another collector or a shop... His late house eventually demolished with all of his belongings still inside, it is quite a sad picture. Any trace of who this man was, among the goods you rescued perhaps?

I remember a friend of my family who unfortunately died in his mid-age, he was a very nice man with a great sense of humour, and his wife once told me that in his last days he was worried about "who will now listen to my records, the music I have loved so much". As a metter of fact his wife was going to treasure his records (she was also very fond of music, and knowledgeable about it), nonetheless she wanted to present me with a pair of his records, just in memory of his late words. His were thoughts that I presume I will also have in my last days.

Sorry to have saddened a bit your hoard celebration, folks. I have no clue wether hoarding is more or less legal in the States (you'd be quite surely shot in the back, here) but I believe you did a good thing and that also the man to whom those records once belonged is happy that you rescued them. Under rubble buried, that's where they would be. A man's treasure, another man's rubble. Amen.

Marco Gilardetti wrote:Thank you very much for this grab-as-much-as-you-can free record hoard report! From now on, everytime I may want to look at something that will never, absolutely never should even the sky fall, happen in Italy in general and to myself specifically, I know that all I'll have to do will just be to come back to this thread!

Jokes aside, I somehow pity the man who lived there. Dying without even a relative or a friend or a neighbour taking care of your things, reselling them or at least giving them for free to another collector or a shop... His late house eventually demolished with all of his belongings still inside, it is quite a sad picture. Any trace of who this man was, among the goods you rescued perhaps?

I remember a friend of my family who unfortunately died in his mid-age, he was a very nice man with a great sense of humour, and his wife once told me that in his last days he was worried about "who will now listen to my records, the music I have loved so much". As a metter of fact his wife was going to treasure his records (she was also very fond of music, and knowledgeable about it), nonetheless she wanted to present me with a pair of his records, just in memory of his late words. His were thoughts that I presume I will also have in my last days.

Sorry to have saddened a bit your hoard celebration, folks. I have no clue wether hoarding is more or less legal in the States (you'd be quite surely shot in the back, here) but I believe you did a good thing and that also the man to whom those records once belonged is happy that you rescued them. Under rubble buried, that's where they would be. A man's treasure, another man's rubble. Amen.

The legality of hoarding in the U.S. is somewhat of a grey area. Some towns and cities have attempted to enact ordinances to "control" hoarding. There was a push from 2005-2010 to bring this to the attention of the public as a mental health issue. Hoarding has been equated with depression. Today, many people have adopted this premise, and you see and hear many people talk about "too much junk", sanity etc. Today's trend seems to lean toward clean living space with minimal home furnishings. There was a tv show produced and aired on one of the cable channels entitled "Hoarders". If living conditions are too cluttered, some social services agencies can step in and make adjustments. I currently own a total of fifteen phonographs which consists of 1 upright, 6 tabletops, 6 cylinder machines and 2 portables. I have about 200 Diamond Discs, 500 78's, approximately 200 cylinders and some accessories. I am told by visitors that this is too much junk. I am starting to tell people, if you don't like it then don't come over.

My belief is, if someone wants to own a lot of stuff that is on them. It is their rights and freedoms to do so "in the land of the free and the home of the brave".

No, sorry... I think I have a lexical issue... I meant "hoarding" in the sense of rushing to an abandoned house (which, even though abandoned, is still someone else's property) and grab everything inside, which in theory should go to the heirs, but I suppose "hoarding" is not the correct word.

Concerning "hoarding" in your terms, I would never apply it, in general, to a reasoned and well-kept collection like yours, as large as it may be. A house completely full of unattended junk and never-to-be-restored "project" gramophones and never-to-be-listened-to records, well, perhaps now we're talking.

In any case, although setting a limit may be tricky, without any doubt hoarding can be pathological. In August, here in Turin, a lady (not a low-class person making a hard living: she was a notary public instead!) was found dead in her apartment after two months since last time anyone saw her. Her house was completely cluttered by trash in plastic bags and, as a matter of fact, a huge stack of trash eventually fell, burying her and choking her. The house was full up to the ceilings with only narrow passageways, to a point that the firemen couldn't access from the door and had to break through from the windows with ladders, wearing oxygen aqualungs. Definitely, a lady who was once a notary public and later dies in this absurd way, had developed some kind of menthal illness at a point and needed help.

Marco Gilardetti wrote:No, sorry... I think I have a lexical issue... I meant "hoarding" in the sense of rushing to an abandoned house (which, even though abandoned, is still someone else's property) and grab everything inside, which in theory should go to the heirs, but I suppose "hoarding" is not the correct word.

Concerning "hoarding" in your terms, I would never apply it, in general, to a reasoned and well-kept collection like yours, as large as it may be. A house completely full of unattended junk and never-to-be-restored "project" gramophones and never-to-be-listened-to records, well, perhaps now we're talking.

In any case, although setting a limit may be tricky, without any doubt hoarding can be pathological. In August, here in Turin, a lady (not a low-class person making a hard living: she was a notary public instead!) was found dead in her apartment after two months since last time anyone saw her. Her house was completely cluttered by trash in plastic bags and, as a matter of fact, a huge stack of trash eventually fell, burying her and choking her. The house was full up to the ceilings with only narrow passageways, to a point that the firemen couldn't access from the door and had to break through from the windows with ladders, wearing oxygen aqualungs. Definitely, a lady who was once a notary public and later dies in this absurd way, had developed some kind of menthal illness at a point and needed help.

Some years ago I helped my then-girlfriend's parents clear the house of a deceased relative, which was much like the one you describe Marco - horrific. Curiously, there was some valuable 1950s audio equipment which I helped them sell (although I would have loved some of it myself), but no records!

Well, the house demo is nearly done...you can still see the basement, and some shelves of records (at least for now. Still a well weathered Columbia in the garage.

As for the actual legal situation about raiding the property. The gentleman who owned the house passed away. His wife or daughter (I'm not sure which), had a little bit of a tiff with the city. I'm not sure if she just walked away, and let it fall into foreclosure, or if she outright sold it to the developer. Either way, the house, and everything inside, became the property of the developer. The developer pulled a demo permit, announced when it intended to do it, and pretty much opened up the house. Obviously for liability purposes, they can't give actual permission, but the developer is currently building two home right next door, so this all happened under the eye of, and full awareness of the developer, and his employees and agents. So it is a grey area in that they didn't say "go ahead, take what you want" because if someone got hurt, they'd be on the hook, but the knew about it, and certainly weren't stopping anyone (and if they can save money by needing one or two less dumpster, I'm sure they weren't complaining)

And the state of it all this morning.