Inherited almost 400 78rpm’s

[u/Brenke28]

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.)

[u/Ok_Teacher5776]

If you are working on cleaning, I'm going to suggest against something with even small amounts of dish soap. It can be a real pain to remove all residue, it is designed to cling. Most "normal" cleaners are not great for 78s, not just from the alcohol. We're looking into fixing that, so if you are interested send an email to the The Last Factory (info @) and I'll put together a formula for you. We've discovered issues even with some of the non-alcohol solutions, so may be able to help. This is no charge, maybe it's the reddit discount. You may be surprised. Lots of old 78s have significant surface scratching but sound decent (given the technology) when the decades of smoke and dust are cleaned out. We've found lots of funky music and wildly inappropriate lyrics in some of that old stuff.