FORUM AGE DEMOGRAPHIC

[kirtley2012]

I'm 15 and as far as I know, currently the youngest collector in the uk
I started when I was 10, collecting lp's 45's, record players, radios and slightly later , 78s, I got my first gramophone when i was about 12

[Henry]

I'm 71. Keep looking in the mirror and asking myself how the heck did that happen?

Clay

Same here, but my mirror tells me!

[debndunk]

Hi, I am 52 my wife is 41 we have been collecting phonographs for 2 years we have 19 machines. We also have 2 gramophones. At the moment we have 250 cylinders and 200 78's.

[VintageTechnologies]

I'm 59 and bought my first Victrola when I was 12. I bought my first Edison Home at 13. I don't know how many machines or records I have -- my wife thinks she knows: "Too many"

[dennman6]

I have recently qualified for AARP membership as I hit 50 this year. My first contact with records was at age 3 when my mother bought a GE Show & Tell Phonoviewer with several of the little albums. Those were 7" 33-1/3rpm records with the story on one side and a song or ballad on the B side. I would play 45rpms on this also. At age 8 I was allowed to roam through the house after school, and in exploring the attic discovered the 1921 Victrola VV-X left there by the former owners of the house. Inside of it was the manual, unopened Victor needle packs, and about fifty 78s. In short order I became well aquainted with Billy Murray, John McCormack, Nat Shilkret, Alma Gluck, Bob Roberts, Fritz Kreisler, Paul Whiteman, Vernon Dalhart, Henry Burr, Irving Aaronson & his Commanders, George Olson & his Music, Johnny Hemp & his Kentucky Serenaders, Roger Wolfe Kahn, several Italian performers(my mom is half Italian), and some guy named Caruso. Many others were in that pile as well. I found that steel needles were still easily bought from Woolworths in the early 1970s. My entire "musical imprinting" came from records that were at least 30 years older than I was. The oldest Victor record in the stash was "Nothin' From Nothin' Leaves You", a 1906 Bob Roberts disc. I have not yet become a cylinder enthusiast, though I've liked what I've heard on 33 and CD reissues of cylinder recordings.

I played the VV-X til one of the springs broke when I was 13. I basically ruined the Victrola trying to fix it myself. Then it sat in various rooms over the decades through numerous moves around the country. Over the decades I continued to collect 78s whenever I could casually find them, in garage sales, flea markets, antique malls. Sometimes friends who knew of my condition of "shellac dependency" would simply give me small collections that belonged to their parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, or themselves if they were old enough to have gotten them new. I have gotten a lot of pop songs from the 1950s from folks who were about my parents age.

The cabinet of that VV-X now stands in the corner of my "archive room" with a 6x9 Newcomb record player speaker installed in the horn opening in 1980. The GE Show & Tell is long gone, but I still have the albums themselves. Never did have another wind-up til I found a Brunswick Panatrope 106 portable in 2005. Then in 2010 I aquired a nice 1926 Victor Credenza, a pair of VV-Xs(1921 oak & 1917 mahogany), and a 1909 VTLA. In 2011 I got a 1910 VV-XIV, and earlier this year I picked up a 1927 Columbia Viva-Tonal 157. For "modern" playback I have a pair of 1950s Motorola record players with Sonotone carts, two Newcombs, one Califone with the big 12" detached speaker, and an Audiotronics unit. For transfers to CD-R I use a 2001 Numark TT-100 with a Stanton 500 cart and feed the signal to a Pioneer CD recorder through a 10-band EQ.

My collection is modest to a "hard core collector" and numbers close to 4,000 78s from 1902-c.1960. I also buy CDs of vintage 78rpm era recordings if the transfer quality seems good. And of course I have numerous 22 reissues of a lot of the 78rpm era as well. I own one cylinder, "Uncle Sammy's Army"(Troxell), which a friend gave to me when I attended his wedding in 1990. I've never heard it:)

[dutchman]

I'm 72 (I think). Started when I was in Pakistan (Islamabad) with the Embassy in 1970-73. A friend on a driving trip to Afghanistan (Kabul) for vacation stayed with us for several days -- as a token of his appreciation he bought me a franken machine with a beautiful horn off a street vendor. The vendor had a strap holding the machine which allowed him to play the machine. He had a monkey, in costume, after playing a record the monkey would pass its little cup around for a donation. My friend never told me what he paid for the machine but figured the Pakistani owner could probably retire... I still have the machine in my collection which has grown to 55+.

That started my collecting.

[Bruce]

I just turned 50 and have been at this collecting and restoring game for about 7 years now and have a basement full of projects waiting for my retirement to prove it.

I would not be too stressed about the demographics of our hobby as it is very likely similar to other hobbies. As we become less young we have more disposable time and money no matter what our passion is. My wife and I just returned from Cozumel, Mexico. Cozumel is famous for its world class diving. At 50 I feel very comfortable with saying that there were as many divers younger than me as there were older than me.

No one there seemed stressed about the future of scuba diving with the aging population, they were just thrilled to be healthy enough to enjoy their chosen hobby.

Bruce