I started collecting at the age of 12 in 1961. Back then, Hobbies Magazine was about the only source of information, which meant almost nothing about machines, only artists. For sale information, there were the classified ads there, plus a newspaper published in Grundy Center, Iowa called "Collectors' News" that I remember. There was a fellow in Virginia named A. Nugent, Jr. who had quite a list and was always on the lookout for copies of "Greetings from the Bunch at Orange" and "Oh, You Circus Day!" by Stella Mayhew. I also remember a cylinder list from a fellow in Minersville , Pennsylvania named Dave Hauser. When you sent a list of records to buy, he would send you the price, and it adjusted according to the number of records you wanted, so the amount was always about the same.
The only way to get repair parts was to find another machine to cannibalize. My first machine was a VV-S215, bought for $ 5 [it was only 36 years old then]. My first cylinder machine was an early Amberola 30 [with the gold striping on the gear cover and the speed adjustment through the top] for $ 35.
My favorite place to look for records sold 10" 78s at 10 cents each, and 12" 78s and Edison discs for 25 cents. Bob Ault
Last edited by hillndalefan on Thu Jun 02, 2011 4:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
At the risk of sounding self-aggrandizing at the worst, and naive at best -- I'm really somewhere in between, I suppose -- although I understand that the hobby and market for phonographs has evolved into a big money deal, I sometimes feel a bit offended that a guy like me who cared about this stuff back when it was practically worthless is now priced-out of a lot of stuff. I yearn for the days when I had a drawerful of Edison and Victor reproducers and when someone would come over who needed one, I would just give it to them, because I could afford to -- I only had a dollar or less in each of them. I remember how thrilled I was when Chuck Mandrake gave me a beautiful original horn to complete my Columbia AU when I was 12 years old. I miss that part of the hobby.
"All of us have a place in history. Mine is clouds." Richard Brautigan
I can certainly sing harmony about the lack of information at the beginning of the 70's. That changed rapidly as the decade went on. Martin Bryan's The New Amberola Graphic and Alan Koenigsberg's Antique Phonograph Monthly both started around 1973 although the Graphic had it's first issues in I think 1969.
I started collecting as a kid in the 60's and those years were the golden age of the cabinet model disc machine. They were really cheap and fairly plentiful: $5 to $10 for a table model and $15-$40 for a floor model upright. ( I bought an Orthophonic Barona for $15 about that time) That said, external horn machines were never common in Southwestern Ontario, and consequently they were never cheap , relatively speaking. I remember a Maroon Gem selling for $225 1972 dollars at local rural auction sale. I wanted it in the worst way but it was out of my league.
Disc records were cheap : two for a quarter at the Goodwill Store in Sarnia, but again they were never overwhelmingly plentiful. On my first visit to New England in the mid seventies I visited Martin Bryan , and of course we went record hunting. I thought I had reached paradise: the amount of records in every junk store were staggering....which is how I came home after I loaded up my luggage with the goodies I found.
And I have never seen so many Credenzas before or since. Every store seemed to have one
but alas there was no way I could get one back to Ontario.
Jim
I'll join in on all that harmony too. Prices seem like paradise now: $80 for a Berliner Gramophone + 5 records in 1973, $20 for a Circassian Walnut XVI in 1967, pulling stuff out of houses for practically nothing - - and sometimes exactly nothing! But the lack of knowledge was appalling. My first "source" of information was my 7th grade textbook for Music class. I bought an "Antique Guide" at the local drug store because it had a few talking machines in it. The compilers knew virtually nothing about them, but their ignorance didn't stop them from making up "facts" and prices. I had an Edison Standard B and a few cylinders. Then one summer day, I discovered a group of other Edison cylinders in a local shop. They were in blue boxes and green boxes, but I bought them anyway (for 50 cents apiece). When I got them home, they wouldn't play properly on my Standard. "Aha!" I thought, "That must be what the '2-minute/4 minute' settings are about on the reproducer!" (A Model K reproducer had come on my $75 Standard B.) Of course, changing the setting didn't help matters, and it occurred to me that simply changing the setting wouldn't affect the length of time the cylinder played. It was all a mystery to me. I wondered if Edison had marketed "Amberol" machines to play these "Amberol" records. Back then, you couldn't just do an Internet search. I honestly don't remember when I finally learned the truth.
As John wrote, they were the best of times; they were the worst of times...
Due to family conditions, I was raised both outside of Louisville, Kentucky and in Buffalo, New York simultaneously. Louisville had suffered a devastating flood in 1937, do pickings tended to be better in Western New York. A typical Sunday drive on Route 20 from Buffalo to Batavia on a Sunday probably involved stopping at close to 20 antiques shops and the always amazing Hickey's flea market in Clarence. I recall buying a complete, mint QA with a (incorrect) brass H&S petal horn and probably five or six grocery bags of cylinders from two grousty old farmers for $5 and returning the next week to buy a perfect oak spearpoint horn also for $5. In fact, the first phonograph I ever bought, a Columbia 'Symphony' for $2.
George, I remember being so excited over those little b&w photos in Warman's and other horrible price guides, and those god-awful descriptions! Lol!
"All of us have a place in history. Mine is clouds." Richard Brautigan
Due to family conditions, I was raised both outside of Louisville, Kentucky and in Buffalo, New York simultaneously. Louisville had suffered a devastating flood in 1937, do pickings tended to be better in Western New York. A typical Sunday drive on Route 20 from Buffalo to Batavia on a Sunday probably involved stopping at close to 20 antiques shops and the always amazing Hickey's flea market in Clarence. I recall buying a complete, mint QA with a (incorrect) brass H&S petal horn and probably five or six grocery bags of cylinders from two grousty old farmers for $5 and returning the next week to buy a perfect oak spearpoint horn also for $5. In fact, the first phonograph I ever bought, a Columbia 'Symphony' for $2.
George, I remember being so excited over those little b&w photos in Warman's and other horrible price guides, and those god-awful descriptions! Lol!
Quite the interesting topic, if only for the surprising number of commonalities shared.
Started in 1967 when I was 11 or 12. One advantage was having a school classmate that was also a collector. We could share info and repair tips (oh, the mis-information that abounded!!) We also could envy each other's luck at scoring a record haul at the local rummage sale or Salvation Army. Records (78s) were usually 10 cents each or something like 3 for a quarter, so I could always justify buying more than just one. I had a paper route after school and would bicycle down to the Salvation Army store when that was done. I'd load up the dual baskets over the back wheel with as many 78s as I could fit in. I got several phonographs for free, some from the original owners, and all came with a story behind them. One, a Victrola VV-240 humpbacked console, had been a wedding present in 1925. One time, I asked for directions at a farm house (headed to a nearby antique shop with my grandmother), and spotted a Sonora console on the front porch. We stopped back and I offered $25 for it and the woman thought for about 3 seconds and said "sold!".
Farm auctions were usually good for a bushel basket of records, usually for no more than $3 to $5. An estate auction nearby had a pristine VV-XVII, with all albums with records and lid key. The bidding stopped just over $100, and I was just crushed. I was sure that NO person would ever pay so much for an upright Victrola, and my maximum of $95 was sure to win it easily.
Cylinders and cylinder machines, almost always Edisons, were always priced higher. For some reason, I seldom saw Columbia (or other) cylinders or players. I seldom ever saw---nor had any chance to purchase---an outside horn disc phonograph, even though they were (supposedly) plentiful in my area of NY. By the late 1960s into the 1970s, they had become much more sought-after as a home decor conversation piece than the upright or console phonographs of any make.
Information was almost exclusively from Hobbies magazine, although there was small publication called Record Central that I had a few copies of----seems that I was their youngest reader at that time. With the Amberola Graphic and the Antique Phonograph Monthly, the world opened up a bit.
I met a few other collectors here and there, and that broadened my understanding of the hobby quite a lot. With them, I was able to buy, sell and trade and all were great people to deal with, and I learned a bit each step of the way. They came to my rescue when I had to sell down the collection as I headed to college. Eventually, the rest of the collection was sold at a local auction house, where it brought just pocket change, this was around 1973-74. My parents pointed out the error of my ways buying all of that old junk when I should have been putting that money in the bank all along.
Sad to say, it was a lesson that didn't quite take hold. I started a whole new collection around 1979-1980 when I moved to DC and met a new cast of characters and collectors. As others have mentioned, the easy access to information, the ease of seeing SO MUCH out there that came with the internet has radically altered my desires and perceptions. Just getting great new or old stock parts has been a huge benefit, and it can be done with the click of the mouse. However, despite the need to take a break from it now and then, I still find this the most interesting and rewarding hobby there is out there.
Does anyone remember buying from A. Nugent Jr? Lots of stuff in a closely typed mimeographed list, minimal descriptions- like "Edison Wizard Phonograph- have no information on this- $250".
My interest in old phonographs began in 1969 when I was in high school. My first Victrola was a VV-50 purchased for $25. My dad wrote the elderly lady a check and wondered why I wanted an old record player. Then came a VV-XVI in 1970 for $50. Records were usually a quarter each and from the era of the phonograph. As I searched the stacks of records at antique shops and swap meets, many of the "newer" records from the RCA and Capitol labels looked so different. I soon learned to stay with records made by the Victor Talking Machine Company. For my high school graduation present, my mother arranged for me to get a Brunswick York for $45.
Edison Amberolas were available for about $75, but my limited budget could not handle it.
Those are my memories of about 40 years ago. It does not seem that long ago.
I got my first three machines in the Seventies: a ratty Amberola 30 (a birthday gift from my parents, who paid about $40 for it at a little shop near my school); a nice Home model A (which the parents of a schoolmate of my late brother gave him - he knew how I was about phonographs); and a VV-IX ( which I bought for $70, at the same shop where my parents got the Amberola). I also managed to get a K reproducer for the Home from the same shop: at the time, it had an H which was missing the stylus bar.
I still have those machines; and have done a lot of work on them (particularly the Amberola, which could use one more attempt to get the finish right).
It always seems a pity that machines were so cheap at a time when we didn't have the money.......
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Bob Ault
