The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I just bought a big bunch of these at a local antique shop, just like the attached photo. One-sided with the big Victor embossed on the reverse side. All red labels, all found inside brown embossed Victor albums. (two albums, 12 records each) What series - years are these from? They are all near mint and quite beautiful. I don't have any like these, they are my first.

I have a couple of these embossed-back 78s. Mine are from the late 1940s, when they were sent to my Dad, who was an M.D., as promotionals for the pharma industry. Mine are holiday and Christmas music issues. They are fancier than the one you show, with the Victor dog logo. They are in red vinyl, quite stunning. I don't play them on my XI, but they are nice conversation pieces. Here's a link to the thread, showing labels and a description, posted here back in 2009:

http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... ?f=3&t=271

I actually don't know exactly when they started using the VICTOR embossed backs. I think it should have been sometime in the 'teens?

In any case, I find them to be very common.

Victor converted the red seal line to double sided in 1923, but the occasional disc in a multi-album set may be found with an embossed back, if they didn't want to put something in to fill up the side.

They are nifty, but actually pretty common. I'm not sure when they were introduced, but they are before 1925 when Victor made all the Red Seal issues double sided. In the RCA era they used a similar design as a filler side on album sets, and on the back of custom pressings.

On occasion you'll find these discs with a coarse spiral groove cut through the design- this was in case it was put into an automatic changer.

Introduced in 1923 for single sided Red Seal records when double-sided Red Seal records were being pressed (ref: The Collector's Guide to Victor Records).

The HMV equivalent of the same design is common in the UK too - typically reissues of older operatic recordings. I guess this appealed to some kind of snobbery on the part of the customer! How else could they sell half the music the records could have contained?

Orchorsol wrote:The HMV equivalent of the same design is common in the UK too - typically reissues of older operatic recordings. I guess this appealed to some kind of snobbery on the part of the customer! How else could they sell half the music the records could have contained?

It's especially silly when you consider that a customer who wanted a whole movement of a symphony was forced to buy (and then change out of the turntable) say, four records issued in parts as opposed to two.

Outside of classical and operatic very little of anything else was ever issued over more than one side in those days. I doubt it was customer snobbery and more like company profit motive.

As I believe someone mentioned early in the the thread, this was also used when you had a classical piece that took up an odd number of sides and were left with one record that would have one blank side. Just a way to make that look attractive. And some of the later ones had a big spiral through the design so as to trip the changer when the last sides were played. I have one of these with a post-1929 set that includes the RCA logo.

Clay

Wolfe wrote:

Orchorsol wrote:The HMV equivalent of the same design is common in the UK too - typically reissues of older operatic recordings. I guess this appealed to some kind of snobbery on the part of the customer! How else could they sell half the music the records could have contained?

It's especially silly when you consider that a customer who wanted a whole movement of a symphony was forced to buy (and then change out of the turntable) say, four records issued in parts as opposed to two.

Outside of classical and operatic very little of anything else was ever issued over more than one side in those days. I doubt it was customer snobbery and more like company profit motive.

During the single side era Victor didn't issue all that much symphonic music- they seem to have assumed that the Red Seal customer listened primarily to vocal operatic music, with an occasional violin solo. Albums of extended symphonic works really took off once electric recording was introduced. Automatic changers might have been attractive to the technology minded (or to the lazy) but real audiophiles always manual turntables.

It's true Victor didn't issue a lot of extended orchestral, but they issued some. Some of which I own.

And some of the opera, like the 30 minutes or so of Gounod's Faust with Caruso et. al.