The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Valecnik wrote:

JHolmesesq wrote:...At age 19 I consider myself in a minority amongst my peers with my tastes. Since I am a relatively impoverished student, I can only afford to buy records - ...

Fact is that at any age, there are very few, as a percentage of the population, that are interested in this hobby. In a way that's good too. If lots more people got into it, the prices would go through the stratosphere.

Haha, good point. The supply and demand isn't something I factored in to my initial argument!

Where is the evidence that the collecting of phonographs and gramophones isn't a declining pastime? All I see (or hear about) is the death of older collectors and the lack of interest in their collections once they have passed on. The younger collectors, if they exist, certainly do not make appearances at auctions or any of the collecting society meetings. Is this part of their 'masterplan' ?

Steve wrote:Where is the evidence that the collecting of phonographs and gramophones isn't a declining pastime? All I see (or hear about) is the death of older collectors and the lack of interest in their collections once they have passed on. The younger collectors, if they exist, certainly do not make appearances at auctions or any of the collecting society meetings. Is this part of their 'masterplan' ?

Where is the evidence that the collecting of phonographs and gramophones IS a declining pastime? Older collectors will die but the lack of interest in thier collections, at least at stratospheric prices, must be at least partially related to this huge economic downturn we are facing. The youngest collectors are less likely to make appearances at auctions and collecting society meeting because they have less money for auctions and they prefer ebay and TMF imho to those more historical approaches to the hobby. I think we've got quite a few younger collectors on TMF and many show up at the American shows, just with less money in hand than some of the older guys?

There is some truth in what Valecnik said - as an American collector, I started about 3 years ago when I was 27. The vast majority of my collection was gotten off of Craigslist first and eBay second. I've only been to a small handful of auctions but i've never bought anything when I do go... and I've been to every Wayne MME phono show in the last 3-4 years and in that time I've only bought one machine from those shows. From my personal experience phono shows and auctions are a much higher price compared to craigslist... altho ebay can go either way.

Steve wrote:. The younger collectors, if they exist, certainly do not make appearances at auctions or any of the collecting society meetings. Is this part of their 'masterplan' ?

We've had a local collectors club here since I started collecting in 1978, and it's still around right now, but have I ever been to a meeting? NO.
By local, I mean it would take me 30-45 mins to drive to the meetings, because they are on the north side of Brisbane & I'm on the south, but I've just never seen the point in driving all that way just to sit & talk about a few machines & play a few records. For literally years, I drove the same distance almost every night to go to niteclubs & dance parties, but I had no interest in going to a mothers meeting to hear the latest gossip about people in and outside the club

I've been to maybe 30 or so auctions, particularly when I was younger, and the number of phonos I've bought or even bid on? ZERO.
I did buy a 1940 Garrard electric portable for $3 which I still have & use, & the small horn for my Pixie Grippa which was in amoungst a bunch of kitchen utensils (I guess someone thought it was a funnel?) but gramophones never sold cheap at these auctions due to dealers wanting them for their shops, so I'd buy Georgian decanters & gold jewelery etc which I'd resell at a huge profit, and that would finance my gramophone purchases which were found privately or in small antique & secondhand shops.
I doubt much has changed there in recent years either, although with ebay being the no.1 "auction house" nowaday, perhaps real auctions might warrant another look?

I would agree that there is probably a change coming within the collector community, but that's the same change that is happening anywhere else in society as well. The older generation will continue to use more "traditional" ways of communicating, like societies, face to face auctions, meetings, written magazines, etc with some use of new technologies. The intermediate "middle aged" collectors group (including myself) is already used to new technologies, but still knows and likes the "traditional" ways as well, meaning we grew up with the during the transition from paper to electronic age. The young generation of collectors does not know a time whithout computers and Internet, so to most of them the "traditional" ways seem slow and awkward, just as strange and awkward as a telegraph is to me.

But all this is just about the way people communicate, meet and make connections. The personal desire to collect something special, to admire old examples of human ingenuity is still the same, regardless of age group. The same is true for the fun with fixing things and the satisfaction with bringing some old neglected artifact back to life. There will always be some who like to do things like that, and a few of them will get infected by the phonograph fever.

I also agree with Shane that there are times in life when phonographs have a larger space and times when people have other priorities. And that's good, because while some downsize others get a chance to own these machines for a while. The big danger is that knowledge gets lost forever, but even there I think the Internet has helped a lot. I read on this forum that while 30 or 40 years ago the rarest machines could be found in junkyards, those who collected them did not have a lot of information available about how to restore them correctly etc. I have a booklet from the aution of the EMI phonograph collection; funny, a good part of these machines would nowadays be considered historically incorrect or even Frankenphones. When I started with my first machine 18 months ago I found tons of information immediately by searching the Internet. So web sites like this are invaluable in making sure that the knowledge stays alive, we only have to make sure that the web sites stay alive and the data does not get lost.

So in order to help the younger generations of collectors, giving them a machine or a record is just one part, sharing information is just as important. And since the new generation is not going to attend the old societies and meetings, publications and knowledge sharing should be made available on the Internet as well.
Sorry about the many words
Andreas

This is quite the interesting discussion, and I for one am very encouraged at the prospects for the future of the hobby. Some other points I have been pondering----how many of us know collectors of mechanical music machines (player pianos, music boxes, etc), who have at least one, if not several, phonographs? They aren't strictly *phonograph collectors*, yet they contribute to the re-sale marketplace every time they add another one to their stash. There are those folks that want "just one" for the sake of curiosity, and I know of several---they aren't *collectors* but they are a small market unto themselves. I have one good friend locally that has begun collecting just within the past year. Here is a classic case of a middle-aged man, who decided to collect something smaller and less demanding than antique cars. He has amassed a great start, some 8 or 10 desirable machines, all just via eBay and craigslist. He has scored some great (and cheap) finds that leave me envious. (His getting that group of Berliner discs as an added "freebie" in one deal really took the cake!) So if we think about it---the buyers are out there.

Then too---for all of the machines that are so lovingly rescued and restored, there are those lost to flood, fire and tornado (in parts of the US), not to mention those collections that hit the landfill via the hands of ignorant heirs. You can almost hear them say "My Dad collected all of that junk, I never could stand any of it"---out it goes. My own sisters have promised me that such a fate awaits my collection should I ever meet an untimely demise! The point is that the supply of antique phonos and records gets a little smaller by the year---fewer and fewer warehouses of "old dealer stock" are out there to be unearthed these days. Just as the older collectors pass away, the supply dries up just a little bit as well.

I believe the future of our hobby will continue and flourish. Everyone starts out as a newbie and asks for the assistance from an older, seasoned collector. I thank the old timers for all their help and expertize. I pass what I know to the younger and new collectors. In this forum and others, I see new collectors and older ones asking for information and advice. As long as collectors help each other out, this hobby will flourish for a long time.
Harvey Kravitz

I recently sold my portable WWII (Waters-Conley) Army phonograph to a young guy who was a WWII collector. It was nice to show how the machine worked and to have a genuine interest in it. He said he had a stack of records he was going to play with his friends. So I let him go home with 2 tungs-tone needles as he was unprepared in the ways of replacing the needle! Well, hopefully he / they get the phono bug!

...and the fact that he was a young WWII collector is a positive sign for collectors and collecting antiques / preserving history / phonos ....and in general.

So according to the polling going on under the topic;

FORUM AGE DEMOGRAPHIC http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... f=2&t=5140

After ~ 24 hours and 76 responses age indications are;

18 or less 4% [ 3 ]
19-29 8% [ 6 ]
30-39 16% [ 12 ]
40-49 24% [ 18 ]
50-59 32% [ 24 ]
60-69 16% [ 12 ]
over 70 1% [ 1 ]

Put another way;
- 12% of members are less than 30
- 28% of members are less than 40
- 52% of members are less than 50
- 84% of members are less than 60

Let's see where this goes. Perhaps the older members will rally before the poll closes but I don't think the results so far indicate the hobby is dying.