The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

They seem cheap compared to today's prices, but remember that a couple hundred bucks a week was still considered a decent wage.

I had a paper route in Buffalo, and we had a vegetable stand in Kentucky. I was able to afford machines on what I made at those jobs.

JohnM wrote:I had a paper route in Buffalo, and we had a vegetable stand in Kentucky. I was able to afford machines on what I made at those jobs.

Wages was much lower in the 70's compared to the present. I bought a Edison Concert (originally called Opera) in mahogany with matching mahogany Music Master Horn for six hundred dollars, in 1973, I considered it expensive then. Now I considered myself lucky. You can still stuck lucky deal once in a while. Last summer I spotted a Brunswick Panatrope Cortez with electric motor, in a very good shape. I do not know any thing about that model, because I collect mainly outside horn models, until I look at it in the Internet, three weeks after. I went back to the antique shop hoping it is still there. It was, much more to my surprised it was reduced to forty dollars, I brought it home. The owner of the shop told me, nobody was interested because of its size.

James

I just found a scrapbook about phonographs that I put together in the 1960s. Lots of great old articles and other stuff in there. But this picture was a particularly fascinating find. I have no idea who sent it to me, nor exactly when. It must have been before 1966. I remember thinking the asking price on the back of the picture was totally insane. Where's that time machine when I need it?

With inflation that $250 would be around $2000.00 today, so it wasn't a bad price really- but if you were a kid collecting in the 1960's you could still find a couple of Edison Home machines with fancy horns for that price. Would have seemed like more bang for the bucks.

I remember when I was 11 years old, I had a clean Columbia BN that I had picked up at a garage sale for $5. My mom was an antiques dealer and had rented a space at Hickey's flea market. I took the BN with me to set on her table and hopefully attract more phonographs. Norm Orts, the lot man, came by and suggested that I put a ridiculous price on it to keep people from wanting to buy it, so I put $65 on it -- stratospheric for the time. A professor from UB came along and BOUGHT IT!!! I could have died! He said he'd be back to pick it up later and left it on the table. Along came an elderly couple who stopped to admire it. They told me that they had an upright Edison at home that had been their wedding present when it was new. We stopped at their farmhouse on the way home where I bought a flawless mahogany 1-B Amberola with several hundred mint BA's for $85 (mom loaned me the $20). Good memories. I cherish the thought that upon several occasions I purchased phonographs from the original owners, themselves.