The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

SPOONMAN19 wrote:

Marco Gilardetti wrote:...on the other hand, this looks like the colonial version of the ultra-rare an much sought-after 114, so I would personally buy it even if it lacks some parts which could be easily replaced by scrapping another machine.

Thanks Marco and Phono48 - I'm torn between this and the 112. Both are the same price - around 200$. But would lean towards whichever is rarer to come by. My fear is getting one of this and then slowly realizing that the repair / restoration job is prohibitively expensive. Especially if 114 parts that Phono48 mentioned are tough to come across. And I've never seen a colonial with that paint-job on the inside. Guessing somebody tried to "smarten" it up!

The only significant paint loss I can see is on the metal horn mouth, any easy fix. The varnish on the case looks original and should not be refinished.

At $200 each I would buy every "Tropical" HMV I could lay my hands on. They were never catalogued in the UK, so the few that are here were brought home by officers of the British Raj at the end of their colonial service. If you decided not to keep them all, the ones you sold would probably show you a respectable profit which you could put towards restoring the others.

If the 114 was mine I would just thoroughly clean it and source the missing parts, shown here in close up :

epigramophone wrote:

SPOONMAN19 wrote:At $200 each I would buy every "Tropical" HMV I could lay my hands on. They were never catalogued in the UK, so the few that are here were brought home by officers of the British Raj at the end of their colonial service. If you decided not to keep them all, the ones you sold would probably show you a respectable profit which you could put towards restoring the others.

If the 114 was mine I would just thoroughly clean it and source the missing parts, shown here in close up :

Great advice! And sincere thanks for taking the trouble to advice me.

That's settled then - the 118 and the 114. And then its off to try and sweet-talk the wife to turn a blind eye if the 112 also joins the group. Try being the operative word...

I'd say those 112 and 114 look very similar to the average wife. An average wife would never tell that they're two, if you just take care to show each one at a time...

Marco Gilardetti wrote:I'd say those 112 and 114 look very similar to the average wife. An average wife would never tell that they're two, if you just take care to show each one at a time...

And given my wife is very average...this could work man!

Also, the chance of her coming onto this forum is less than zero. Which is way I will continue to breathe!

SPOONMAN19 wrote:And given my wife is very average

...and double check she'll never come here and read this!!!

SPOONMAN19 wrote:

epigramophone wrote:

SPOONMAN19 wrote:At $200 each I would buy every "Tropical" HMV I could lay my hands on. They were never catalogued in the UK, so the few that are here were brought home by officers of the British Raj at the end of their colonial service. If you decided not to keep them all, the ones you sold would probably show you a respectable profit which you could put towards restoring the others.

If the 114 was mine I would just thoroughly clean it and source the missing parts, shown here in close up :

Great advice! And sincere thanks for taking the trouble to advice me.

That's settled then - the 118 and the 114. And then its off to try and sweet-talk the wife to turn a blind eye if the 112 also joins the group. Try being the operative word...

Tell your wife that it could be worse, much worse. A Teak HMV202 sold in 2011 and caused some excitement on this forum. Not an easy machine to hide...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HMV-202-Re-e ... 7675.l2557

Be careful saying your wife is average. You might have worse things than a missing gramophone to worry about!

VanEpsFan1914 wrote:Be careful saying your wife is average. You might have worse things than a missing gramophone to worry about!

Oh yes. If my wife comes across my attempt at punning on Marco's "average wife" sentence...I will definitely have no more worries!!!

Indeed all wives pretend to be "special"...