Jazz Chat Episode 6
Field Trip to the Non-Jazz Deep-Freeze 78 rpm Record Archive!
Nearly every 78 rpm record collector I know has a stack – or several stacks – or a few crates – or a garage – full of shellac records they don’t want and that do not have much resale value individually. This can happen as you acquire large job lots or have records given to you.
A collecting mentor once told me: “If you pick up every record that comes your way, you are not a collector – you’re a hoarder.” And that is why I have focused my collection on jazz (with some notable excursions into music that interests me). But I have ended up with a lot of stuff outside of my area of focus.
A sort of Hippocratic oath among 78 collectors is that you “do no harm” to old records – even the ones you don’t personally enjoy. This creates a responsibility as the record’s new caretaker to find good homes for them. However, as 78s are quite bulk and heavy and fragile – this responsibility can be daunting.
These are not the kind of records that fly off the shelf. It could take several lifetimes or more to sell or find homes for each record individually. They are also difficult to sell as a group – as so many thousands of 78s weigh a lot and take a lot of effort to safely move. I have had luck with giving away some records – but often the people who claim free records are not collectors and I sometimes worry about their fate.
In any case, join me as I visit my own personal “Lonely Mountain” hoard of unwanted records – the Non-Jazz Deep-Freeze Archive – and see what lies inside.
Along the way, if you see anything you are interested in – let me know in the comments.
I’ll be working on organizing most these for sale this summer when I have more time to devote to it.
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