The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I’m looking at buying more amberol cylinders and I see asking prices all over the map, usually with no listing of titles. Chances are there will be a lot of overlap with my current collection. How do I determine a fair price given I might want to resell some? Any guidance would be appreciated.

Burt68 wrote: Fri Sep 10, 2021 11:31 am I’m looking at buying more amberol cylinders and I see asking prices all over the map, usually with no listing of titles. Chances are there will be a lot of overlap with my current collection. How do I determine a fair price given I might want to resell some? Any guidance would be appreciated.

Asking the value of "amberol cylinders" is like asking the value of "Victor records." Everything depends on title, artist, and condition of the individual issue. Personally, I ignore a listing if a seller doesn't specify at least titles and artists. Are you looking at bulk lots? Without more, you're likely to end up with the world's largest collection of Henry Burr singing "I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen" and Harry Lauder singing "It's Nice to Roam in the Gloamin' on a Sunday Morning."

I'll expand on what DRH has said ...

If you are wanting specific titles, keep notes on what they have sold for. That is the current market value. Like any collectable, the more desirable it is, expect to pay more for it, and have more competition obtaining it. You can wait for years to try find a favorite song cheap, you may never obtain it. Sometimes you will get lucky.

If you do not want the overlap in records, you must ignore bulk sales - unless you have the opportunity to see them first and the space to store them. This usually involves resale of the unwanted records. Be sure you want to do that!

You will likely end up staying focused, spending a bit more money on what you want, and enjoy your hobby now.

James.

PS: Read the YANKEE TRADER GUIDELINES and place a Wanted ad for titles you want.

...and in turn I'll add a bit to the good advice James just offered: if you are looking at eBay to get prices, go to "advanced search" and look at prices realized for listings that actually sold. Don't go by prices in active, unsold listings. People will ask anything and everything for opening bids or "buy it now," and those figures are worse than meaningless, usually the delusions of somebody who just inherited a few beat-up commonplaces from Great Aunt Harriet and thinks they'll finance that next vacation in Bermuda. By the same token, though, be careful not to misinterpret a "fluke." Once in a while, someone will grossly over- or under-pay for something. If you see four or five sold listings for something, and one went for $50 but all the others were between $5 and $10, figure the thing was "worth" $5 to $10 and one seller got lucky. By the same token, if several listings of something went for around $50 but one brought only $5, don't count on being able to buy one for $5.

One other tip that is just my personal preference. Avoid 4min black wax Amberol cylinders, unless you get them cheap and won't regret if they end up shattered. They were made from an inferior wax formula that tends to break, just for the heck of it. If they get cold or if you exert too much pressure changing them or the mandrel is a different temperature from the cylinder, or if you just look at them wrong, they break. Celluloid Blue Amberols or 2/4 minute celluloid Indestructibles are my favorites.

Postage costs make buying cylinders singly an expensive business. I normally buy job lots, keeping those that I want and selling on those that I don't. Again to save on postage costs for the buyer, I only sell cylinders as job lots.

I have found YouTube to be a valuable resource for listening to cylinders prior to purchase. The chances are that someone somewhere will have posted a YouTube clip of most of the cylinders you are interested in.

And another source are the podcasts of our colleagues at the forum, and also the Internet Archive at www.archive.org which has lots of cylinders fir listening online, even the rare ones.

There are so many titles on wax Amberol that were never put on the Blue Amberol. edisonplayer.

edisonplayer wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 10:29 am There are so many titles on wax Amberol that were never put on the Blue Amberol. edisonplayer.

You're right... they shattered before they could be copied...