The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Dad's personal collection of gorgeous, high quality Edison cylinder phongraphs is more extensive than family members who are interested. As I get ready to sell some of the external horn machines, do I want to pair them with the best, largest horns? Or does it make more financial sense to sell the phonographs and horns separately?

Sell them with the horn. Most collectors like to keep the orginal machine/horn together.

EKzono wrote: Sun Oct 12, 2025 7:56 am Sell them with the horn. Most collectors like to keep the original machine/horn together.

Totally agree. Wrong or missing horn is a big turn-off. Especially for a disc machine. There can be some variation in horns for cylinder machines, since a lot, (but not all), cylinder machines could be outfitted with a horn of the buyer's choice. Still, if some given horn was known to be paired with a given machine for all its life, it's nice to keep them paired.

If you display them with the horn, and they're correct or plausible together, you should sell them with the horn.

If the horn & machine are badly mismatched, you could offer the buyer a choice of with or w/o horn.

- Bill

I was once involved in clearing a collection whose lately deceased owner stored the horns separately from the machines.
Having reunited each machine with it's horn I had one left over, an 11 Panel Edison Cygnet.
Everything went to auction and sold well, but months later his widow contacted me to say that she had found several more machines carefully hidden away. One was an Edison Triumph minus it's Cygnet horn.......... .

I know of another collector who stored soundboxes separately from their machines, also causing confusion after his death.
Keeping everything together makes life easier for those who have to deal with your collection "After you've gone".