Turns out Jimmy wasn’t the only, or earliest, record collector in the family. I remember our Dad playing his 78’s but I never new what happened to them until now. And there are a lot more of them then I remembered. And they are really frickin’ heavy!

Does anyone know anything about 78’s? Like:

-Can you play them on your turntable if it has a 78 speed selection?

-Do you need a special cartridge and/or needle?

-Do they have any value?

-Is there a way to store them that is different or particular to them specifically?

-is there another thread dedicated to them? (I couldn’t find one)

I would say there are at least 100 and possibly closer to two hundred. They were buried in the back of the very dusty attic at the house in O’side. It took three of us to get them down the pull down attic ladder. I’ll start looking at them more closely tomorrow.

My dad got a bunch off a friend of his. There was an old record player, too, similar to a Victrola I guess, but it was heavily damaged.

As far as playing them, yes, if your turntable has a 78 setting, you can. Special cartridge? I'm sure that's a rabbit hole you can go down for miles and miles. When I had a turntable that played 78s (many moons ago), I didn't have a special needle for them.

Heavy? Oh yeah. And thick.

Value? It's like anything else. If there's something rare and desirable, sure. Look for old blues recordings, especially guys like Robert Johnson. There's a store near here that specializes in 78s, and a few years ago, they found a very rare Johnson record, valued at $6-12k. They played it once a week on Saturdays for a month before they sold it. I was able to go listen once - very cool experience.

Hopefully this isn't paywalled for you.

https://www.post-gazette.com/ae/music/2 ... 1211160170

ETA: I forgot how this ended. He ended up trading the record to R. Crumb in exchange for a drawing he uses on T-shirts. I remembered the story about the drawing and the shirt - I didn't remember that it was the Johnson record that was involved.

https://www.post-gazette.com/ae/art-arc ... 1302270327

IIRC they're very brittle, so be careful with them.

Yes, we have one, as well as a few records to play.

It’s Michelle’s so I’d have to ask her any questions you have.

The RCA building in Camden is where these were made and that’s 10 minutes from here.

and from what i recall about them, they're so fragile that 6-8 play throughs can be enough to greatly reduce their value.

oh, and no melting them down and drinking them. Those Terraplane blues just aren't good...

I have a couple dozen I've picked up; mostly early bebop stuff I found for a few bucks here and there. Hard to believe shellac 78s survived these 80+ years considering how fragile they are.
Some of the big early labels for collectible 78s are: Okeh, Vocalion, Paramount, Victor, Gennett. Jazz, country, and blues probably have the biggest collectible interest.

My grandparents had several of them when I was a kid. You could play them on a normal turntable with the needle it already had, as long as there was a 78 setting (most had it back then when I messed around with these). Sadly when my grandfather passed away the whole collection was trashed. It was all operas and classical stuff I had no interest in, but I wish we'd have found them a home. Ah, well.

Here's a great - not just good, but great - book on the subject, Amanda Petrusich's "Do Not Sell At Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World's Rarest 78rpm Records". It's an excellent primer on the history, technology, and value of old 78's, along with terrific profiles of the people who collect them.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/145166706X/?tag=imwan-20

If you borrow a copy from your local library, you certainly won't regret it.

I might regret it if I found any of those we threw out in that book!

Love that book. Here she is talking about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=955rFXkbNc4&t=2s

Here are the boxes with most of Dad’s 78’s. Also the topic of this week’s JIMBO’S Friday List.

I recall needing a different type of needle on the cartridge to play them properly. Many years ago I owned a Lafayette Belt Drive Turntable that had a cartridge with a double sided stylus that you flipped over to play 78's. I think it was a Spherical needle.

That's correct. Both the geometry of the needle and the angle at which it meets the grooves is different for 78's than that used for later disc formats. The sound is less than ideal if you just increase the speed of rotation without using the appropriate pick-up configuration. But with a well-worn 78 it's not going to matter much. On the other hand, if you wanted to rip the best digital copy possible, you would want to find the right turntable.

There are many youtube channels featuring thousands of digitized 78s over a wide variety of genres. Quite a few of the channels take extra care with making the best transfers possible. Also loads of vintage 78 transfers on archive.org. Again, a wide variety of genres (and countries!) represented.

[YouTube]https://youtu.be/pnsizkVjGm8[/YouTube]

Here's an interesting interview with Amanda Petrusich about her book on 78's, along with a demonstration to the audience:

https://youtu.be/ATWVssGY0yQ?t=1106

You can't use the shortened url to embed Youtube videos.