Some Old Records May Be Priceless

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30856, 15 September 1965, Page 7

Some Old Records May Be Priceless

"The Press” Special Service WELLINGTON, Sept. 14.

Treasure trove in the form of priceless artistic rarities in old collections of phonograph and disc recordings is being dumped in New Zealand because people are not aware of their value, according to a Wellington collector, Mr W. Main.

“Every time I leave household rubbish at the tip I see broken records,” he said. “They stopped making 78s more than 10 years ago, and many of these records are already collectors’ items. Even such a popular artist as Enrico Caruso was now a rarity in his early records. These were fetching as much as £5 overseas. Mr Main said he was certain that valuable rarities still existed in New Zealand. “In the early days of recording, the local dealers used to send to London, say, for 100 records. They did not stipulate which records, and quite often the London dealer dumped out to the colony records which were not selling well in England. “Today these lesser-known, not so popular, not quite topflight opera singers are the ones in demand by overseas collectors,” he said. “Quite often they will fetch better prices than a contemporary recording by Caruso. The lesser-known singer made fewer copies at the time, so his recordings are now proportionately rarer.” The price of cylinders and discs in the early 1900’s made price so prohibitive that few were sold in many cases. Adelina Patti recorded for the Edison company in 1905, and

her recordings sold for £1 Is each. Today these were correspondingly rare, although owners of phonographs were able to record for themselves on blank cylinders simply by pushing one playing phonograph against another which was recording. Today only six copies were known of the British singer Sir Charles Santley singing Mozart’s “Non piu Andrai,” the first 12in disc recording. This sold at the time for 10s 6d to £1 Is, and today it is priceless. However the value of a cylinder or an early disc depended always on its artistic merit, on the singers and the song. Interference noises and scratches did not matter as in the great find of the first live recordings of the Metropolitan Opera in action, made in the early 1900 s. But the basic quality must be there.

“From my own experience most are worth from 3d to ss. It depends entirely on what’s on them,” said Mr Main.

“Even though damaged and crystallised by damp and the passage of time, maybe without labels, early cylinders and records should not be discarded for rubbish until they have been checked to see what’s on them,” he said. For a Canterbury phonograph collector Mr W. Norris, who found the only known Bettini cylinder recording by Marcella Sembrich in a Nelson hotel loft, overseas offers could be expected to increase with time.