The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I just acquired about 30 very, very dirty Blue Amberols; apparently from a barn or storage shed somewhere and donated to a thrift shop. They came with what are almost certainly storage drawer slides out of a cylinder storage cabinet of some kind. There are 3 of them. Originally there would have been at least 4 as the highest peg number is 120 and there were 30 pegs on each.

At their widest, they are 15 ½” x 16 ¾”. The bottom board sticks out from the sides by ¼”, which would have served to go into groves in the inside of the cabinet walls in which they slid. They originally had metal L-bracket stops at the back, most of which are now missing. The pegs, some of which are missing altogether or are missing tops, are made of pasteboard with ink-stamped numbers on top.

Question one is does anybody recognize them?

I hate to just throw them away if someone has the kind of cabinet in which they were originally fitted and needs them.

Clay

Bump. (For some reason this disappeared from the new post list abnormally fast.)

Not being a "cylinder guy" I can only add that you are correct about them being interior drawers IE. a door would be closed over them. The evidence of the additional width of the floor of the drawer and type of catch. That style catch was used on the herzog half barrel for the two interior shelves. They would catch on a simple steel (heavy) pin just below the slot the drawer floor slides in.My guess is a cabinet quite similar to the image on page 127 of Fab & Pauls " "Gadgets, Gizmos and Gimmicks" book likely for Amberola 30 or 50.You should let everyone know what the wood is on the face of the drawer is it Oak or Mahogany? I would agree that someone out there needs them. John

Appears to be oak.

Thanks for the reminder to look in that book. Don't know why I didn't think of it yesterday. Perhaps too tired, as that is the first place I'd normally turn for this kind of info.

I think you are right about them likely being from a Herzog cabinet. On skimming it, they look very much like the "drawers" in the Herzog cabinet in illustration 4-30 on page 112 in terms of their design, albeit probably not for that cabinet as 6 of the ones I have should hold 180 cylinder rather than 216.

I'm guessing that at some point in history somebody wanted to use the cabinet for something else and just removed the drawers, cylinders and all, and stuck them in a barn or shed.

Clay

any more viable?