The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I miss the days when people collected these things when they were practically worthless and it wasn't so much about the money.

Ah yes, would that I had known then what I know now.

Clay

I've experienced something a bit similar with antique Victorian marble and slate mantle clocks. In the late 1980's I lived in Texas and religiously attended shipping container auctions of merchandise from The UK. Back then $100 would get me any clock I wanted regardless of how large or ornate. I sold all of them in the late 90's at barely a 20% profit. Those same clocks now go for 10x those prices and despite having owned at least 50 of them back in the day...I can no longer afford to buy one in 2011. If only I had packed them away somewhere!

I grabbed the photo below off the web as an example of the marble/slate clocks I bought.

There's a story of a man who built a storage building out of those clocks.

Hi Estott, I'm thinking that there are several people with such houses.
They are also excellent for building landscape retaining walls, boat anchors & tombstones. If you remove the movements they are also excelent for very classy yet creepy bird houses.

God knows that some of them, ok most of them really are hideous. Every once in a while a nicely proportioned one with simple lines and nice color rises from the dead. I actually really prefer the smaller, slightly more modest ones like the one below.

The one in Erich-Dieter’s photograph is a good quality 19th century French clock (appears to have a Marti open escapement movement) and actually worth a few hundred $$$. Anyone who would build a storage building with them perhaps is also fond of starting fires in his fireplace with $100 bills. If you have some to throw away, kindly throw them in my direction. Granted not everyone's taste, but a fine clock nonetheless.

Historically tastes shift back and forth from the elaborate to the plain like the movement of a pendulum as people grow weary of whatever is currently in vogue. It seems to me that the pendulum is currently somewhere toward the center on its way back from the extremes of mid-twentieth century “modern.”

Clay