The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I came across recently a nice collection of about 200 mostly Victor's, with quite a few Red Seals. Noticed a coupe of them have a beautifully "embossed" Victor logos on the back. After a couple of Google searches, all with theories of varying significance, figured I would ask the group as to what, if anything, these embossed logos signify. Personally, I wish more had them- I think they are beautiful, certainly more than the "information" placard, or the completely blank one, which are what I have seen until recently.

It just something Victor started doing with single sided red seals after a certain point in time. It doesn't really signify anything. They are actually quite common.

They look SO nice!

Some Victor classical album sets have them too. If the work recorded took up 7 sides and they opted not fill up the 8th for instance, it may have an embossed back on what would have been side 8.

I wish some of my Caruso's had it. Would make an already special record look even more special.

Wolfe wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 3:13 pm Some Victor classical album sets have them too. If the work recorded took up 7 sides and they opted not fill up the 8th for instance, it may have an embossed back on what would have been side 8.

As with the 1927 Stokowski recording of the Beethoven 7th Symphony which included a one-sided introduction by Stokowski describing and illustrating the musical themes on the piano.

Looks so nice. Victor were masters of packaging and marketing.

There is another different, embossed design, as well... on some later RCA pressings...

The first RCA one Curt posted is unusual in that it has a needle groove. It was designed for record changers so that the record could be rejected quickly and easily. This style seems to be much less common IMHO.

As near as I've been able to determine, this practice started when Victor started pressing both sides of the record, which for Red Seal records was in 1923. Apparently the double-sided presses were designed somewhat differently from single-sided presses, and in cases where there was nothing for the reverse side of the record, the spiderweb was added to aid in the flow of the shellac biscuit material.