The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I was pretty excited today, after taking the big step of importing around 70 records from Japan.
I am here posting photos of two albums ( 4 x 2 records) with Stephen Foster songs on Victor, and the alcum cover graphic is also great on one album in particular ( the steamer).
The rest of the records are Japanese music I believe, it will be both interesting and challenging, but hey...that's what life is for, meeting challenges and widening the horizon of the mind. I will upload some photos of the Japanese labels soon, so you can have a look.

I did not have any recordings of Stephen Foster music, so when I saw these two albums, I immediately added them to the basket.

Everything was extremely well packed as we can see on the photo. The shipping...was expensive, but the records themselves were not too bad.
This is not something I will do often, it was more a test, and the curiosity of adding some really odd records to my collection.

A few more examples, not one record broken.

You might try Google Lens to translate some of your record labels. I haven't used it myself but I've seen some impressive demos.

Wonderful records! Seeing these reminded me that I have a Japanese mystery record I've puzzled over for more than 20 years. I'll post about it separately.

I can't imagine what it cost for the records and the shipping.

Garret

The Japanese Victor pressings are quite good, with low background noise. I have an album of Bach's Brandenbourg concerts from the 40s that sound better than the original US issue.

The records were not expensive to buy, but of course..the shipping and import tax etc was the challange, but I could not resist the Stephen Foster albums, adding a lot of 60 Japanese folk/traditional/popular recordings to challenge my brain to listen to the Japan/Asian pentatonic scales.
The total cost was around 280 euro, including import tax. Not something I will do often for sure. I have something to dive into during the dark Northern winter season for sure.

Thanks for sugggesting using Google Lens, I have never tried that software, yet.