[78-L] Picking up 78s next week

[Bill McClung]

Three or four years ago I bought about 12,000 78s from a guy in Pawhuska,
OK.  He said he had 20,000 but when we had them all in the truck they fit
in 92 12x12 cardboard boxes that were single stacked in a 24-foot rented
truck. I had separated out the "good stuff" and they were in 10 milk crates
in the back of a Suburban.  The boxes only filled half of the truck floor.
I had no idea what size truck to get and at that time the rental fee for a
16-foot was the same as a 24-foot so I supersized.  I packed them in the
boxes while my son-in-law and a friend loaded them in the truck.  It was a
lot of work and took us three days.  Day one was driving the eight hours to
Oklahoma City and picking up the truck and boxes in Dallas along the way.
Day two was driving the two hours to Pawhuska and loading the 78s and
driving back to OKC.  Day three was getting back to San Antonio.  But it
was totally worth it.

Next weekend my wife is working the Museum Store Association show in New
Orleans and I'm going along to help her. This time I will need that 24-foot
rental truck.  After we set up the booth at the show Saturday morning I'll
spend the rest of Saturday packing up 78s.  Sunday I'll work with my wife
at the show and then go back to packing up records on Monday while she
works the show alone.  Tuesday I'll pick up the truck and pay two guys who
work for the guy I'm buying the records from to help load them up.
Wednesday we'll finish up and drive the twelve hours back to San Antonio.

I'm planning on leaving the brokens and the juked and a good number of
commons behind.  What I found when I did my sampling was a lot of small
labels, a lot of Imperials and Regals and Specialtys with New Orleans
artists, a lot of Texas labels which is my meat, and, oddly, a couple of
batches of pre-war 78s in good shape which is what I didn't expect to
find.  So hope springs and we will see what we will see.

On Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 11:21 PM, Bill McClung <bmcclung78 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Early next week I'm traveling to New Orleans to pick up the remnants of a
> juke box distributorship.  The guy I'm buying it from says there are 30,000
> 78s (and a few thousand 45s) but I'm thinking the number will be closer to
> 15-20,000.  They are in a warehouse apparently undisturbed for many, many
> years.  We are going to have to move a lot of furniture and parts of Mardi
> Gras floats to get to them.  I looked through about a thousand from several
> spots and found a mix of commons and brokens but also found enough
> interesting 78s in good shape that I took the chance to buy them.
>
> I'll send a follow-up post next week.  What I find fascinating is the
> games my mind is playing going through all the possible good things I'll
> "find."  When I look through 78s I always keep my expectations low and that
> has served me well.  We'll see what we will see.
>
> And no, there isn't any flood damage.  It's near the oldest part of the
> city which was built on the highest ground.  We'll see what we will see.
>