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I recently acquired a little Edison Gem. It's very nice, but some prior owner removed a dealer tag from the lid, and it's quite unsightly because of differences in the finish and color, and the nail holes. Check the photo in my subsequent posting in this thread, below.

The tag was slim and rectangular, probably just like the example I found online, shown in the attached photo. The tag area measures exactly 3" x ⅝" and has a single nail hole at each side.

Does anyone happen to have something that might work to cover or replace the missing tag?

Thanks.

My humble opinion:

If you don't know who the original dealer was, why replace the tag with one that is likely to be incorrect?

It may be 'unsightly'; but falsifying a machine's history seems rather worse to me.

Bill

I also just got a machine that has two holes as a result of the missing dealer tag. So long as you disclose to any buyer, I fail to see the problem.

I suppose so. Thus, I trust you interview each seller as you buy a machine, to gather the history of all known prior owners and locations, then document that provenance for any further owners?

No, of course not. Because it's interesting, but not important. They all started in New Jersey and that's where it ends, unless you get a dealer tag or a paper receipt (with its serial number) along with it.

The complete value of a dealer tag is for you to ponder any difference between the location indicator thereon (if any) and the location at which you found it a century or more later. I have a Columbia B "Eagle" found near NYC, with celluloid tags from Milano. It's so romantic to imagine it being bought new in 1902 as an imported machine in Italy, then carried a few years later to the land of opportunity by immigrants - who held it up for inspection as they passed under the gaze of the Statue of Liberty. But for all we know Luigi got it at a garage sale in Firenze just before he moved to the big apple to go to NYU back in 2005.

My little Gem came from New Jersey and was sold to someone by a dealer somewhere, perhaps James O'Dea in Paterson. Then over the course of about 115 years it lost its tag and made it to LA by way of Fresno, or wherever the guy from whom I bought it said he was from. Now it lives near SF.

Maybe I should find a Bacigalupi decal for it instead.

In the meantime it's a machine from New Jersey, prized in great part for its distinctive lid, which is marred.

Would filling the holes and artfully refinishing the marred area be acceptable? I think that's worse.

What are the dimensions? John

It's exactly 3" x ⅝"

Here's a photo. Thanks for any help you can offer.

Hmm, my earlier response reads a bit snarky. Sorry! I'm a bit cranky in the morning sometimes.

where did you see those tags.??? Mark Darcy on E bay seems to come up with a lot of tags and parts.. He goes under croakinfrog. There is a chance the dealer tag you get could be from the original dealer with some Las Vegas luck. My own personal opinion is it would look better with one preplaced than not. I do not think Thomas Edison will reach down from the clouds and rip it off. We all want to keep them original as possible but over one hundred years stuff can be changed on these machines and if you were not told you would think it was original. Just do not mess with the mechanical stuff. It is accepted to put on an aftermarket repeater though which was not original. We put on bigger horns and cranes which were not original. It seems to me we can add a few personal touches to our machines as long as they are still periodic. I do not think they will devalue the machine as long as the parts are correct and not PEPROS.. I like breaking out my Edison's a different one a month , add s large horn, or a small horn or a cygnet horn and play with them. If there is no cygnet mount on it I add it and leave one on. This is the fun of the hobby I have holes in one of my Home A long boxes and I am debating the same with a tag. Hopes this helps Tom B

Here is something that you can do until you find an original that you like. Find an image of a dealer tag, size it correctly in PhotoShop and print it out on paper like parchment which appears aged. Then laminate the resulting tag, cut it out and attach it. Lamination makes a great celluloid appearance. I did this for missing instruction tags and patent tags on my music box. After showing it to several collectors, they approved and couldn't actually tell the difference.

Now, for you purists who are probably accusing me of blasphemy, would you accept a machine that had a replaced decal printed by Gregg Cline? If so, there is no difference... just making your machine look better cosmetically, does not change its historical value and if it looked shabby in the first place, this is an improvement.

As Peter said, do you really check the provenance of all machines back to the first owner? If so, which I doubt, how do you get reliable info as to whether the machine was changed 10 years from new... still 100 years of age on the changes that would be next to impossible to detect. If you like the machine the way it is, don't do anything... If not, do what makes you happy. Just my $.02 worth...

That's a clever idea. Thanks.

I think I shall start a dealer tag thread elsewhere on this forum. I like them a lot and it would be fun to see some of the tags on our members' machines.

Curt A wrote:Here is something that you can do until you find an original that you like. Find an image of a dealer tag, size it correctly in PhotoShop and print it out on paper like parchment which appears aged. Then laminate the resulting tag, cut it out and attach it. Lamination makes a great celluloid appearance. I did this for missing instruction tags and patent tags on my music box. After showing it to several collectors, they approved and couldn't actually tell the difference.

Now, for you purists who are probably accusing me of blasphemy, would you accept a machine that had a replaced decal printed by Gregg Cline? If so, there is no difference... just making your machine look better cosmetically, does not change its historical value and if it looked shabby in the first place, this is an improvement.

As Peter said, do you really check the provenance of all machines back to the first owner? If so, which I doubt, how do you get reliable info as to whether the machine was changed 10 years from new... still 100 years of age on the changes that would be next to impossible to detect. If you like the machine the way it is, don't do anything... If not, do what makes you happy. Just my $.02 worth...

I understand the other points of view: my reservation (In Vino Veritas, as I posted it), was that future collectors, in the absence of any documentation of the restoration, might assume that the replacement tag was original, and hence claim a provenance that is incorrect, and perhaps inflating the machine's value based on that.

Bill