The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Forgive me if this has been discussed already. I have been too busy to keep up with the forum. I just came across victorrecords.com . Graham Alexander has bought Victor records Victor Talking Machine and His Masters Voice names and is trying breath new life into them. Check out his website.

Oh, WHY? Can't he establish something NEW instead of latching onto the reputation of a dead company in hope that it will somehow help him? I think the idea is pathetic. If a company is dead and gone let it stay dead.

Surely you're all familiar with the Steampunk "movement". Assuming that it's not just a quickly passing fad, who knows what direction it could go.

Meanwhile, get your gold-plated Victrola "V" key while you can. A bargain at $80! Complete with necklace chain!

This guy is nearby, he emailed me a couple times about buying a few machines, I replied, then never heard back from him. I figured the whole thing had just fallen through, but I guess not.

I noticed this new "Victor" is re-releasing Caruso, Ellington,and others. I wonder if this will have any impact on original Victor 78 prices.

It is not clear if this new Victor actually owns the old matrices. They show photos of the old artists like Caruso, but I did not see actual records for sale. As far as I know the rights of the records belong to Sony.

CarlosV wrote:It is not clear if this new Victor actually owns the old matrices. They show photos of the old artists like Caruso, but I did not see actual records for sale. As far as I know the rights of the records belong to Sony.

It sounds odd to me. Some years back a new Biograph company was incorporated, claiming the lineage of the original American Mutoscope and Biograph Company - and ownership of the films. That was a total scam, I'm hoping this is something with better intentions.

There was recently a story on NPR about Hydrox cookies. The brand had been out of production for decades but was owned by Kraft. Some entrepreneur who wanted to revive the brand contacted a lawyer. He was advised that if he could get a written statement from the company that owned the "dead" brand that they had no intention of reviving it, then he could (via legal channels) take control of the brand name.

He sent Kraft's PR department letter (essentially) saying that he loved the cookies as a child and wanted to know where he could now buy them. The letter they send him (essentially) said that the brand was not in production and they had no plans to bring it back.

With this letter he was able to take the brand and it's logo. He's now selling Hydrox cookies and someone from Kraft's PR department is probably out of a job

Maybe this guy did the same with Victor.

GrafonolaG50 wrote:I noticed this new "Victor" is re-releasing Caruso, Ellington,and others. I wonder if this will have any impact on original Victor 78 prices.

I didn't see where it said anything about record releases. Only a collection of "legacy artist" pictures.