About two years ago the NSA dumped a few thousand 78 tpm records despite
our protests. It was a legal matter. Had a lot of bousy and hawks and
other stuff.
Shai

On 4/16/2010 5:12 AM, Steven C. Barr wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "Tom Fine" <[log in to unmask]>
>> The big problem I read from the somewhat poorly-written newspaper
>> story is that the collection is large and mostly common reissue LPs.
>> So it has little value, even to scholars. This sounds like 450 boxes
>> of mostly dollar-bin records. The university seems to have made a
>> correct decision, given limited resources and time.
>>
> It DID seem to be reissue LP's of 78-era recordings; however, these
> are not always "common!"
> I used to own (long story) a couple hundred British reissue LP's of
> vintage 78's (another chap
> used to buy them from UK dealers and tape them, and then sold them to
> me for VERY low
> prices...!)! I couldn't have afforded either the purchase of the
> original 78's or the huge cost
> of shipping them to Canada...so I happily accumulated the LP's! I
> suspect the chap who "stole"
> my LP's (gave about $100 for a thousand LP's plus the industrial steel
> shelf unit on which I
> stored them...?!) had no idea where to sell those albums...?!
>
>> The lesson here for people on this list -- an accumulation of numbers
>> is not a collection in the useful sense. Careful culling and careful
>> selection of what makes up your collection makes it valuable and
>> worthwhile. A huge pile of disorganized and common old records is not
>> of much use to anyone. Also, as time goes on, condition matters more
>> and more. If you've cared for your collection, it will be of more
>> value to someone other than you.
>>
> As I read it, the original collector of the LP's did so because he was
> specifically looking for
> 78-era recordings, but didn't want the "hassle" of assembling a
> quality 78 player...?! It
> would have been much easier to accumulate LP reissue albums of the
> vintage original
> recordings, for which players are/were easier to acquire...?!
>>
>> All of this is hard to hear by some old guy who's spent years
>> accumulating, but it's how it is today -- and frankly how it's been
>> ever thus. I'm hoping that academia and other endowed repositories
>> are concluding that numbers don't matter, it's quality and focus that
>> matters in a collection. Much better to have a little pail of golden
>> wheat than a silo of chaffe.
>>
> As I already commented, university-level music departments almost all
> view "pop music"
> as beneath them?! Would it have been more likely to have been kept if
> it were an equally
> large collection of CLASSICAL LP's?! One wonders...?!
>
> Steven C. Barr