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should say: This music's not important, or valuable, so send all your
78s to us, we'll take 'em off you hands.
But saying that wouldn't be fair.
On a dollar per disc level, very few people are going to get rich hawking
their grandparents’ 78 collection. So when we get calls from people
asking how to cash in on their collection we have to tell them honestly
that there's too much of it out there and too little interest. In order
to find rare or valuable 78s, you'd have to devote your life to the
search. Where the true value of 78s can be found (and where my interest
lies) is in the connection it can offer a person with the past, particularly
if you're looking at a family collection. You can learn a lot about
your ancestral loved ones via the music they listened to. Also, there's
a charm to older music and the way it was recorded. 78 rpm records hold
the legacy of recorded music from an era when a botched performance
couldn't be fixed in "post production." Musical ensembles
were either hot or not, and it shone through on the recordings they
made.
Uncle Jeff will also tell you some technical stuff about how the sound
clarity packed into the grooves at that many rotations per minute (78
as opposed to 45 or 33) held richer depth and that even modern digitization
techniques will never do that sound justice.
But they
should be preserved. 78s are brittle, easily broken, awkward to listen
to and a nightmare to store or transport. If you can get them saved
into a more manageable format, do it. We're also glad to help. Because,
despite all the hassle, I just think 78s sound great and look terrific.
I even like the smell. And, there's nothing quite like the smooth almost
oceanic tone that fills the room when that needle drops onto those grooves.
So if you’ve got a heap of these black shellac beauties, drop us
a line with the titles and – if they strike our fancy, we’ll
see if we can’t arrange a little transcribing party.
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