The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Received in the bubble envelope as shown, with 2 thin pieces of cardboard on each side. My heart sank when I saw it was in an envelope and not a big box. Sigh...

Sorry for your loss..its a shame some people don't know how to properly pack fragile 78's.
Was this by chance an ebay purchase?..if so... you might be able to get a refund
if you used PayPal.

Dave wrote:Sorry for your loss..its a shame some people don't know how to properly pack fragile 78's.
Was this by chance an ebay purchase?..if so... you might be able to get a refund
if you used PayPal.

Yes, it was on ebay. I'm working with the seller who says he will refund. I'll get the refund, but I'd rather have the record...

Looks like it was in pretty nice condition too. Sad to see...especially for a record like that.

Yipes! At least it's a clean split, so maybe you can glue it back together and declick the heck out it. Still, shame on the sender for not packing it properly, and shame on the carrier for being so careless with it

I have a 78 that was victim to an old record changer, and it's split clean in half. To make matters worse, it's part of one of those big classical album sets where part 1's on side A and part 33's on side B (Beethoven's Diabelli Variations on Vox)

Records don't need special packing protection because they are all "vinyl". Just look at any records being discussed by the minimally informed. If it's not a CD, then it's "vinyl". Which even they know is plastic and, therefore, not delicate. You know, like all their parents' Beatles LPs that they used to throw around the room when they were kids. Throw it in a box and ship it. Seriously, if you suspect that a seller doesn't know that the record he's selling is shellac (like, maybe because everything else he's selling is a video game), then you need to quote them chapter and verse about how to pack the record for shipment. Or you can resolve to purchase from only reputable and knowledgeable sellers.

I've actually had broken vinyls and video games come in the mail. You gotta hand it to UPS for figuring out how to bungle that up

gregbogantz wrote:Records don't need special packing protection because they are all "vinyl".

...and anything that plays records is a Victrola, right?

The one that boggles my mind lately is sellers who refer to records as phonographs, as in "Lot of 12 Edison phonographs" that turns out to be 12 cylinders...

FWIW, I once received a CD through the mail from a friend across town that was sent in a thick envelope, but arrived completely shattered. Proved that even CDs are not invincible.

Receiving broken records is an all-too-frequent occurrence, mostly from general eBay sellers that are not record dealers. Some don't know squat about packing, and others simply don't care. I recently began pointing sellers that I have not dealt with before to Bryan Wright's Claxtonola website that gives good pictorial instructions for packing 78 rpm records. http://www.claxtonola.com/shipping78s/ The reactions from those sellers have been positive so far. I usually offer the seller a few extra dollars to buy the proper packing materials to do the job right and to not use media mail.