Do old 78 rpm records have any value?

[rpb]

An elderly friend of mine wanted me to find out. She has some old pop music I think. I told her that I didn't think they would be worth selling.

[Steve Lee]

Plug this into your browser's search engine:

78 RPM records sell

[Geoff Millar]

At least in Oz, the vast majority of 78s are worth b - - - -r all, but there are a very few rare discs which are worth something , if in good condition. I guess it's like any other collectible in that respect.

Does your friend have a list? Might be worth spending some time having a look on line to see if any are collectible.

Geoff

[Paperweight]

Pop music would be worth more than some collections I've seen that were mostly religious music. I think some turntable makers like Rega still make a 78 centric player and cartridge.

I made a wash and vacuum machine out of a common junker turntable and a lab vacuum pump. You'd be amazed what can be saved and brought back to sound good after a cleaning cycle or two. Shellac has to be cleaned with alcohol free record washes.

[fpitas]

I'd put them up on eBay with a reasonable reserve value. You just never know who is nostalgic and has free cash.

[rpb]

Plug this into your browser's search engine:

78 RPM records sell

Thanks for the link. I can't believe some of the prices I saw. I was hoping for $5 each, but figured there would be no interest due to lack of suitable turntables. Maybe she has a couple that would make selling worth some effort.

[billfitzmaurice]

Collectors don't buy them to play them, they buy them to have them. Like coins and stamps their value is based on their rarity. $100 is rare, $1,000 is very rare, $5,000 is extremely rare. You have to research each individually.

[fpitas]

Collectors don't buy them to play them, they buy them to have them. Like coins and stamps their value is based on their rarity. $100 is rare, $1,000 is very rare, $5,000 is extremely rare. You have to research each individually.

I think that's right, at least typically. Besides, the fidelity is just awful by modern standards.

[Geoff Millar]

True, fidelity - aided by years of wear, scratches, dust, finger grease etc - is poor, but LP and CD transfers of the 78 masters by Naxos, EMI and RCA were at least listenable and the only way to hear some great artists such as Artur Schnabel and Dinu Lipatti.

Geoff

[fpitas]

I imagine if one is lucky enough to own one of the sought-after masters you can almost name your price.

[relder]

Desperate Man Blues is an interesting documentary on 78 collecting.

[Whitneyville1]

I have paid handsome ($50) prices for excellent (as new) 78 recordings (some 16" discs) of things unavailable any other way. Du Jazz Band du Hot Club of France (Louis Armstrong, Django Reinehardt, Stepahne Grappelli, et al) on Pathe (90 RPM thank you!) Enrico Caruso, The Original Dixieland Jass Band, 1880's flat disc Negro Gospel Quartet and Quintets cut in Skokie, IL unbelievable voices! (Edison wouldn't allow anything but "Coon songs" to be recorded on his cylinders, he was such a bigot! He also wouldn't record "***** Jew-Boy" Eddie Cantor or Al Jolson.) My 90 RPM "DIAMOND" is Anton Rubinstein playing Chopin, since he KNEW Chopin. Technically it's poor, but a now 140 year-old recording I cut some slack for. Audacity's algorithms aren't optimized for acoustic recordings this old.

[Geoff Millar]

I have an LP transfer of the 1926 recording of the Beethoven Violin Concerto by Fritz Kreisler and Leo Blech, obviously transferred from 78s. I tried to 'clean it up' using the Audacity noise sampling/removal function and the results were terrible, there was hardly any music left!

Geoff

[davidroberts]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Everything is only worth what someone will pay for it. I have certain items that I collect, mostly for nostalgic reasons, that others would find silly.

I recommend listing them on fleabay with a reserve if you wish and seeing what the market will bare. Although I can imagine shopping might be a PIA.

[Geoff Millar]

This gives some ideas about value:

http://www.valueyourmusic.com/most-v...-rpm/last-week

Geoff

[Whitneyville1]

Geoff, RCA had a program to "clean-up" their wax masters (now destroyed) back in the mid 1970's and they made transfers to their "Heritage Series" LP's of recordings. I have their re-issues of The Original Dixie Land Jass Band, Moms Mably, Early Louis Armstrong and a couple of others and the sound quality is amazing for acoustic recordings. Sadly, when SONY/BMG purchased RCA Victor, they took all of the wax masters to the Camden city landfill and destroyed them. Even the Library of Congress doesn't have copies of most was what was destroyed, as many of the recordings were never released. Just like the burning of the MGM film vault and the Colombia vault. Super Media Corp. decided it was too costly to keep preserving films that weren't making money for them. But a kid clerk at EMI threw-out 200+ hours of Beatles tapes because they were taking up space in the files too. Let's throw away Andy Warhol's soup can next. It's taking up space that a canvas of some chimps throwing paint at could be using.

[Geoff Millar]

The cultural vandalism is sad indeed, but unfortunately not unexpected: the BBC destroyed many radio shows such as the Goons, TV shows with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore and who knows what else to 'save space'. The trouble is that the works are destroyed before people know about it, and if they did know, I'm sure there would be collectors and libraries which would gladly have taken such treasures.

Geoff

[Steve Lee]

The Library at Alexandria was burned to the ground as well . . .

[TNA]

You might ask on The Talking Machine Forum,

https://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewforum.php?f=2

There may be a member near enough to look at her collection.