NO FEAR of losing interest and need Help?
Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 3:04 am
There's been lots of discussion about loosing interest in the hobby. It seems this affliction is spreading faster than the swine flu. Well there's at least one on this forum, me, that suffers the opposite problem. 
My interest started when I was so small that I had to stand on a chair next to my grandmother's Victrola XI to play it. I'd go to farm auctions with my grandfather and try to convince him to bid for me on some of the phonos that showed up. I was too young to get a bidding number. I didn't manage to pick up more than a few 78s for years.
I got my first decent paying job out of college. About the same time I met a friend who'd gotten an Edison home, a Fireside, a Sheraton diamond disc machine, about 60 cylinders and 25 diamond discs out of the basement of his parents small town drugstore FREE. Just the Sheraton was complete. Before long we'd gotten both the cylinder machines running too. I'd discovered diamond discs and cylinders!
Soon I'd found a Hepplewhite in my hometown antique shop. It had no reproducer and the spring was stuck. My grandfather helped me fix it, ending up with a few stitches in his thumb after the spring got loose, really. Anyway we got it going.
A short time later, a well known collector in the Minneapolis area advertised an Edison Standard for sale in the newspaper. When I went to look, he had it set up on the kitchen table. I bought it and asked him if he might have any extra records for it. Somewhat reluctantly he said, "Well I suppose. Come on downstairs."
I stepped into that room and thought I'd died and gone to heaven. I remember being particularly impressed by his late Edison Concert set up with 52 inch brass horn, by "Victor Row" with most of the lettered then numbered Victors side by side. There were Columbia rear mount cylinder machines, a 20th century, a mint US Junior, which I own today, and many many others.
My interest has not waned since. They've changed a bit and of course I've sold alot of the first machines in order to upgrade to more desirable and usually more expensive toys. Collecting slowed sometimes due to life changes, job changes etc. but I always got back to it when things got more settled.
So.... am I okay or should I be seeing a doctor???
My interest started when I was so small that I had to stand on a chair next to my grandmother's Victrola XI to play it. I'd go to farm auctions with my grandfather and try to convince him to bid for me on some of the phonos that showed up. I was too young to get a bidding number. I didn't manage to pick up more than a few 78s for years.
I got my first decent paying job out of college. About the same time I met a friend who'd gotten an Edison home, a Fireside, a Sheraton diamond disc machine, about 60 cylinders and 25 diamond discs out of the basement of his parents small town drugstore FREE. Just the Sheraton was complete. Before long we'd gotten both the cylinder machines running too. I'd discovered diamond discs and cylinders!
Soon I'd found a Hepplewhite in my hometown antique shop. It had no reproducer and the spring was stuck. My grandfather helped me fix it, ending up with a few stitches in his thumb after the spring got loose, really. Anyway we got it going.
A short time later, a well known collector in the Minneapolis area advertised an Edison Standard for sale in the newspaper. When I went to look, he had it set up on the kitchen table. I bought it and asked him if he might have any extra records for it. Somewhat reluctantly he said, "Well I suppose. Come on downstairs."
I stepped into that room and thought I'd died and gone to heaven. I remember being particularly impressed by his late Edison Concert set up with 52 inch brass horn, by "Victor Row" with most of the lettered then numbered Victors side by side. There were Columbia rear mount cylinder machines, a 20th century, a mint US Junior, which I own today, and many many others.
My interest has not waned since. They've changed a bit and of course I've sold alot of the first machines in order to upgrade to more desirable and usually more expensive toys. Collecting slowed sometimes due to life changes, job changes etc. but I always got back to it when things got more settled.
So.... am I okay or should I be seeing a doctor???
