The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Some friends who are not collectors were looking at some of my machines today.
As I opened the needle container of an HMV102, one of them exclaimed :

"Just look at that! An ashtray! They thought of everything in those days."

I must say that I had never thought of that.......

It reminds me of an old cartoon- a couple stands in a room with a fireplace and built in bookshelves. "The house came with these lovely videotape shelves and a nook for the television"

Recently I visited a customer that had purchased several high-end machines from me. He commented that when friends come to his house, they drool over his new flat-screen TV and ignore the nearby phonos worth 100 times as much.

My brother-in-law has a Columbia BF cylinder machine displayed in his living room. (His only machine, the lucky stiff inherited it from his grandmother.) One day my sister had a plumber come over to fix something; the plumber was a recent arrival from Vietnam. He saw the Columbia and asked what it was. She simply said "a record player", wound it up and gave a demonstration. The plumber exclaimed, "No electricity? What will they think of next?"

raphael wrote:Recently I visited a customer that had purchased several high-end machines from me. He commented that when friends come to his house, they drool over his new flat-screen TV and ignore the nearby phonos worth 100 times as much.

Raphael, Having a couple of small kids, 6 & 8, attracts a fair amount of thier friends' parents to our house. Stepping out of the foyer into the living room it's immediately IMPOSSIBLE to miss a Triumph with oak cygnet, Victor V with oak spearpoint horn and, a the somewhat less conspicuous Edison A250 in oak. We also have a fairly large flatscreen TV.

I don't think I've ever gotten an unsolicited comment on any of the machines and on the rare occaisions I've prompted an offer to demonstrate, have never gotten past the first minute without the guests returning to regular conversation. We get lots of accolades for the TV though...