[78-L] acoustic vanity - price list?

[Rodger Holtin]

These examples are interesting, but not quite the same as making a short-run of a vanity record.  The examples cited are records for which the pressing plant had metal parts shipped in to them for pressing in their geographic area, so the expense of a recording session, wax, plating, etc was probably not part of their in-house expense, whereas the true vanity record would have incurred all those expenses on top of the price of actual pressing.
 
SURELY, somebody has found a price list for this kind of stuff.  I would bet there are copies in Rudy Vallee's stuff as he made a number of private-vanity records and he seems to have kept everything he ever touched in his lifetime.

Rodger

For Best Results use Victor Needles.

.

--- On Wed, 1/26/11, Benno Häupl <goldenbough at arcor.de> wrote:


From: Benno Häupl <goldenbough at arcor.de>
Subject: Re: [78-L] acoustic vanity
To: 78-l at 78online.com
Date: Wednesday, January 26, 2011, 11:56 PM


Are you sure that it would have been that expensive to have small run made? 

Hugo Strötbaum (www.recordingpioneers.com) found correspondence in Hayes between HMV head 
office and their agent in Cairo. IIRC, the letter was dated around 1908.  HMV at Hayes threatened 
Cairo to cancel the contract with their Egyptian representative. 

They were not prepared anymore to press less than 15 copies of any given record. In other words, 
before that time there were runs of less than 15 copies. Which explains why only about 10% (!) of 
the discs in the Egyptian HMV catalog have surfaced so far! 

Another example.   Richard Weize of Bear Family Records interviewed the product manager of the 
German M-G-M label at Electrola in Cologne. This man confirmed following fact. The three German 
issues of Hank Williams 78s were initially pressed in 5 (five!) copies, and when sold, another five 
were re-pressed, and finally a last batch of five.  All three German Hank Williams M-G-M's had a 
run of 15 copies total!  

So, couldn't a person have 15 copies pressed of a vanity record? 

Benno
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