The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

This is a listing that I found of a reproduction Edison Amberol Cylinder of

Red Hot Henry Brown by the Georgia Melodians

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Blue-Ambero ... SwImRYIcWB

This is a hard to find cylinder.

Except for the box, are there any tell tale signs that this is a reproduction cylinder? Are there markings on the cylinder saying it's a reproduction? Years down the road, someone could sell this as an original, and no one will know. Just my observation.
Harvey Kravitz

They will never pass as original to knowledgeable collectors because these reproductions do not use a plaster core.

Thanks for the info. It was hard to tell in the pictures. The core looked like it was a black plaster core. I have some BA's with a black plastic core. Now, I know what to watch out for when I see these cylinders at a cheap price.
Harvey Kravitz

Looks like someone bought this one...SOLD for $ 42.50

Was it made by Norman?

Yeah, looks like he is selling off his surplus stock.

Usually these newer production cylinders retain value. They wind up to be more rare than commercial original records, (maybe not as rare as brown wax). Although ones of super rare records still usually are a bargain compared to an original. Also some are fanciful cylinders of music that was never issued on a cylinder. Usually most are less than 100 pieces of each title. In 16 years for instance I have only made about 14,000 cylinders, probably more than most modern producers, however still a drop in the bucket to one day at the Edison record plant.

16 years and 14,000 units produced?
That is an average annual production of 875 units.
875 divided by 365 comes to an average daily output
of 2.3973

Just to be clear: that's an average of 2.4 cylinders
made each and every day for 16 years.

Then, 2.3973 divided by 24 comes to .0999, which
means that .0999 units were produced every hour.

Inverting that, we get one unit made every 10.01 hours
for 16 years!

That is "Red Hot" there....Henry Brown!

(a red-hot what, not specified, but boy it's red hot
all right!.... )

I think these new reproduction recordings are a bargain, especially for the harder to find titles. For instance: A copy of "Honey" from Norman is $80.00, but where could you find an original copy? How much would you pay? Another one, "Some of these Day's?" by Sophie Tucker is not easy to find on wax amberol and they are very fragile, I think $ 80.00 is a small price to pay for a new copy. Of course, one can tie up a good investment when purchasing many copies of these cylinders.
(i.e. 25 new cylinders could run well over $ 2,000.00).