Discussing value is tricky. Collectors sometimes agree on approximate value of some 78s but disagree about others. I am amused by the way value depends on whether one is buying or selling. Some collectors like to quote high prices if selling ("I'll sell this Nat Shilkret disc for $400 since that is what a recent auction said it is worth") but offer low prices if buying ("I'll buy it for $3--back in the 1960s you couldn't give those Charlie Patton records away").
I am not writing here for advanced collectors since they don't need the help I can offer in a short article. I give simple tips for new collectors and also non-collectors who inherited 78s that they wish to sell. Many non-collectors who have found find my homepage while surfing the Internet have asked me how much Uncle Harry's big band 78s are worth. I am happy to give some general tips here. Of course, if anyone has good 78s to sell at a cheap price, I'm interested. And I buy printed material that helps me write articles about artists--especially old record catalogs and supplements.
If asked about value, I inquire about condition and sometimes ask if the seller needs to sell items in a hurry--or is the seller in a position to find that certain someone who will pay a premium price? People who sell 78s on auction lists mailed to collectors throughout the nation get the highest price for old records. These auction dealers work hard to get those prices--from beginning to end, an auction takes several months, and there are various mailing and printing expenses (and figuring out where to send lists is not easy!). About 40 individuals in the nation are known among collectors for their regular auctions. Since I don't bid on auctions, I don't have a list of these folks who hold auctions.
Antiques dealers are also in a position to ask high prices for 78s since eventually the right person will walk into a shop and buy the interesting titles (if priced too high, even good titles will sit--that typically happens in antiques shops).
But some people with 78s to sell are not in a position to ask high prices. Want somebody in your town to drive over and pay top dollar? That won't happen. And old 78s never bring much money to someone who is moving overseas and must sell items by Thursday.
Also important is whether a buyer may pick items out of a collection--or must one buy everything to get the good 78s? That affects price. Finally, items sell for different prices in different regions.
Collectors of 78s pay high prices for anything in good condition issued by companies such as Vogue, Black Patti, Black Swan, Autograph, Berliner, Fonotipia. They start at $20 and go up, up, up. Collectors pay high prices for clean records manufactured for a "race" market, including Victor's 38000 series, Columbia's 14000 series, Okeh's 8000 series, and Paramount's 12000 series. Certain Bing Crosby 78s are worth at least $10 each--not the ones on Decca but some of Crosby's early discs, such as the ones on Brunswick.
A market definitely exists for interesting 78s. Every big town in America is home to a passionate collector, often several. I know in Northern California a hundred advanced collectors. Some like "pioneer recordings" of the 1890s and turn-of-the-century; others like '20s jazz; some buy only opera; others specialize in hillbilly.
Need to sell a box of records? Methods for finding buyers include placing ads in local newspapers, putting ads in journals for hobbyists, taking boxes to flea markets, visiting swap meets where record collectors gather.
In this age of high technology, one way to invite assessments of your 78s is to type a list into a computer and offer to send the list to collectors via the Internet. A simple announcement about your list in the phonograph newsgroup ("rec.antiques.radio+phono") should generate interest among some collectors. Be considerate. If collectors sense that you are not serious about selling the 78s but merely want a free assessment of value, they will resent their time being wasted. Another risk is that you can spend hours typing up a list and then have the response be "Sorry, but your 78s fall under the easy-listening category. Nobody buys Guy Lombardo and Frankie Carle 78s." There is an awful lot of junk on 78s. I groan when people send me long lists of easy listening artists, waltzes, polkas, Hawaiian numbers, Bing Crosby on Decca, the South Pacific soundtrack, and whistling solos.
How does a novice collector learn about how much to pay for desired items or how much to charge for duplicates? Nothing beats the guidance of experienced collectors--though not all experienced collectors like to give up their time to explain things to beginners who might give up the hobby next week or to beginners who collect for what might be regarded as the "wrong" reasons (some people start collecting 78s only with the idea of buying cheap and selling dear). Do not pay attention to those who insist that novice collectors should find out what records sell for on auction lists. The fact that a Johnny Marvin record sold for, say, $100 on an auction list only means that one person at one time wanted that one record desperately. Consider that a winning bid means that someone was willing to pay more than everyone else. The same record might never sell for such a high price again. Freakish things happen on auction lists ("freakish" in the other direction, too--occasionally bargains can be had, especially if you make bids on discs offered by some of the smaller auction houses).
Only one price guide enjoys credibility among at least some serious collectors. The American Premium Record Guide, by Les Docks, is 450 pages, has illustrations, and gives prices for over 60,000 records. Many collectors have great respect for the guide; many other collectors complain about errors, wrong prices, too much attention paid to rock, and so on. But the folks who complain the loudest about Docks' guide at least own a copy, and that says something.
Docks' book can help one determine relative value--what records are hot, what records are ho-hum. You will find the 5th edition priced at $24.95 in good book stores. Don't spend more on the guide than your records are worth! It is a shame when people spend $25 on a book that fails to list their many 78s of Perry Como, Art Mooney, and Margaret Whiting. These names are missing from Docks' guide because the discs have no steady value though the fact that a name is missing from Docks' guide doesn't automatically mean that artist's 78s have no value to speak of since Docks omits all kinds of "collectible" artists. I mentioned Art Mooney--actually, Mooney's Vogue picture discs are listed, which are collectible only because they are picture discs, not because of the music. I have never met a collector who was interested in listening to picture discs--they are collectible for display purposes.
Docks' guide covers jazz, blues, country, and rock 78s--the four categories of music that Docks evidently respects. He knows these categories well. To be more precise, he is very good with jazz of the 1920s but is far too selective about bebop and traditional jazz of the 1940s for his guide to be useful for these jazz categories. Charlie Parker? Docks has no interest, listing a mere 7 Dial recordings out of the many Parker did, and then Docks underprices them at $5-8 (try to find some at that price--remember, Docks says his prices are for 78s in excellent condition). He is very good with blues but there are important exceptions, such as when he claims Lucille Hegamin 78s issued by Arto are worth only $5-8 (Hegamin introduced "Jazz Me Blues" on Arto 9045 in 1921--try to find a copy for $5-8!). He is great at listing obscure string band recordings but you won't find prices for Vernon Dalhart's "hillbilly" records made for Victor or Columbia or Brunswick--that is, Docks is great at listing the high priced stuff but not the ordinary stuff.
The funny thing is that Docks' prices are too low for the high-priced stuff. If he says a record is worth $100, plan to bid $200 or more if you wish to win it from an auction. But if you visit a fellow collector in his home (yes, "his" home--I just haven't met many female collectors of 78s), maybe you can buy that particular record for $100. Again, auction prices are always the highest but there are other ways to buy 78s.
He doesn't say it, but Docks lists under 5% of all 78s made in the U.S. from 1920 to 1955 (Docks lists almost nothing from the pre-1920 era--his title indicates he covers records that go back as far as 1900 but his title is downright misleading, probably so more copies of the guide will sell). That is not a criticism. His book is actually quite thick. No book can give prices for every record ever made, and there are plenty of "junk" titles out there that deserve being ignored. I could not have done as good a job. It is true that I would like to see at least some titles in the book by such incredibly prolific artists as Henry Burr, Harry Macdonough, Frank Ferera, Frank C. Stanley, Collins and Harlan, Joseph C. Smith. Docks works harder at listing obscure 78s than at listing representative titles of "common" artists, but he certainly does a good job of listing obscure 78s that advanced collectors seek, at least in the way of "hot" jazz, blues and hillbilly.
If Docks likes an artist, he gives every title (well, the title on one side of a disc) and record number. He clearly loves blues 78s, so everything recorded by Leroy Carr, for example, is here. Docks lists only token titles for artists whom he dislikes or is indifferent towards. Ten Marion Harris titles are picked at random out of her hundred titles, none of them the rare "electrics" worth the most money (I would be happy to pay $15 for each of Harris' late electric Brunswicks). Ragtime numbers recorded by the American Quartet, Peerless Quartet, and Ada Jones are missing despite being collectible. Bert Williams? Gene Greene? May Irwin? Blance Ring? Docks obviously has no interest in such artists. He is not strong when it comes to the records of "personalities" even though the first section of his book has the word "personality" in it.
He usually undervalues the records of stage performers. The fact that he lists George M. Cohan records at $5-10 indicates he knows nothing about their value. It is a case of Docks simply making up figures. The one Cohan record that pops up if you are a collector is "Life's A Funny Proposition After All," and maybe you can buy it for $10. For the other Cohan records, you would be lucky to acquire any one record for under $60 (I'm looking for these!). Meanwhile, Docks overvalues Moran and Mack 78s, or at least the Two Black Crow skits on Columbia 935-D, 1094-D and 1198-D. They are too common to be worth $5-8 each, as Docks claims. It is a rare case of Docks giving too high a value. I have never met anyone who would pay so much for the early Two Black Crow skits, and I wish I could sell my many duplicate copies for such high prices.
"Pioneer" recordings can be highly collectible, but Docks lists few discs from the 1890s to 1915. If you own clean Dinwiddie Colored Quartet discs or Williams and Walker discs, you'll never learn from this price guide that your discs are worth about a hundred dollars each. What about C.H.H. Booth's "Creole Belles," recorded for Victor on November 1, 1901? Isn't the earliest disc featuring piano ragtime worth something? I would be happy to pay $50 for a copy! According to the book's title, Docks covers 1900-1965. In fact, he is too selective about pre-1920 records for the guide to be any good regarding pioneer records, and for the sake of honesty he ought to drop the handful of pre-1920 titles and change the book title so it says "1920-1965," not "1900-1965."
The book ignores classical 78s, and I am glad that he avoids them altogether rather than give just token titles. Docks is wise to stay clear of Caruso, McCormack, and other opera singers. When it comes to pricing classical 78s, it is a whole new ballgame!
A bonus of Docks' guide is a 50-page section of photographs identifying labels. For most labels, he gives accurate information about when the labels appeared. But for some "early" labels, he is off by a decade--another indication that he cares little for early discs, that he tosses in token items only because his book is supposed to cover from 1900 onwards. He dates the early Climax label from 1901 as a "circa 1910" disc. I am surprised that he never fixes this error. Why repeat an obvious error edition after edition.
Docks writes in his Introduction, "The prices quoted in this guide are for records in excellent condition." For about a thousand titles, I wish I could find the records in "excellent" condition at the prices he cites!
Nonetheless, you will find Docks' book useful if you use it to determine relative value. Always remember that it is a GUIDE, not a bible. Prices should not be cited as if handed down from the Lord.
There are others ways one must be cautious when using the guide. It lists a dozen Billy Murray titles, a few at high prices, one at $20-30 since it is a special Edison needle-cut disc ($50-60 is more realistic). Don't conclude from this that all Murray discs are precious. The singer made over a thousand recordings, many today selling in the $2-4 range. The guide doesn't indicate that.
I criticize some things--low prices on some records, the pretense that this s a guide for 78s as early as 1900, the omission of key artists--but this price guide is the best available. In many ways it is very impressive. I don't actually use it to consult prices but I refer to it at times to remind myself what companies a certain artist recorded for, or what the number of a certain record is. I do not believe anyone will come along to challenge Docks by compiling another price guide so detailed.
I can only scratch the surface when discussing such a complex topic in one article. I find writing about "value" to be a little distasteful. The journal that I edit never says anything about how much records or machines are worth--articles are about artists whose recordings are notable and machines that are fascinating works of craftsmanship. Beware of collectors who talk only about value and dollars ("how much is this worth and did I get a good deal?"), never about how much they enjoy the music on old 78s and admire the sound of their talking machines.
