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I bought several machines today and with them the seller included these Columbia cylinders. They were all wrapped in their original cotton batting and from what I can tell, all the cylinders are in mint, unplayed condition. All of the boxes had ancient tape holding the lids on. I can't believe that nobody played these in the past 120 years. The most interesting box is the Red Cross box (bottom, far left) - the title is printed on the box. I have never seen that on a Columbia box of this period. Is this common? (I just noticed that I put the lids are on the wrong boxes - oops)

I think it’s very rare, congratulations

Anybody know what the letter between the stars on the attached label indicate?

Nice gem quality haul!
Here's a start for your Red Cross search...
https://archive.org/details/NAG112/page ... ross+march

James.

Very nice!! Congrats. What kind of machines did you bring home?

MTPhono wrote:Anybody know what the letter between the stars on the attached label indicate?

I believe the letter between the stars on those record slips indicates the master from which it was pantographed.

Here's a chronology of U.S. Columbia cylinder record boxes (standard-size):

https://forum.antiquephono.org/topic/25 ... hronology/

Congratulations on a nice group of records!

George P.

Have you been successful removing the cotton batting? Jerry

Wow! Great score!

Your cylinder box with "Red Cross March" printed on the label is certainly not at all easy to come by! That same title was also released in disc form on Columbia 1255 (10-inch record; 1903) with a special red, white and blue label. The same title was released by Columbia several other times throughout the years using various stock labels. The New Amberola Graphic article about Columbia Personal Records (which James / Roaring20s pointed out in his response above) mentions the 1903 disc (page 9, second paragraph), but does not picture it. An example of this record label (from the internet) is pictured below. Like your box, my copy of this disc also has tape on the label.

Nice finds,
Bob

Jerry B. wrote:Have you been successful removing the cotton batting? Jerry

Successful would not be a term I use here....I removed two from the boxes just to see what I got but was unsuccessful in getting them back in with the batting. I carefully peeled several others just enough to see condition. I was able to get those back into the boxes.