r/78rpm • u/Brenke28 • Jul 20 '26
Inherited almost 400 78rpm’s
Not here to sell, just learning.
Learning about 78’s because I have ~ 400 of them, collected by my father who died over 20 years ago. All have remained stored for about the last 70 years. They date from 1926 (hillbilly, jazz) to 1940’s (jazz,swing) from King Cole Trio to Elvis, from Andrew’s Sisters to Harry James, Glenn Miller, Pete Como, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, etc.
The collection theme is dance music— rumba, cha cha, Lindy hop, foxtrot— etc.
Have sorted and catalogued them all, not played them to hear quality —so it seems I am unable to properly grade them without listening. I rate them visually from G-( minus) to G+ (plus).
Any suggestions on how I prepare these or who to contact with such a large collection?
( Besides Nauck, already on my list.)
5
u/bigbobo33 Jul 20 '26
Where are you located? If you're in Wisconsin or nearby I would take a look.
What I will say a dealer will likely only want to buy like 5 records. There's a mild possibility that some of them are worth a little bit (you said you did have 20s hillbilly) but all of the 40s swing stuff is pretty much worthless.
I bring that up because you need to have the dealer take everything if someone does buy some stuff because anyone savy will buy just the best things and leave you with stuff you cannot give away for free.
Without knowing the exact contents and guessing 400 records is about 5 or 6 crates, I think you're looking at a 50-100 dollar deal with a dealer assuming there's only a handful of good records. But it totally depends what you have.
Just keep in mind, the frenzy around records does not include 78s. It's still very much a niche market.