[78-L] Street finds, the dream of a collector.

[ciadelgramofono@yahoo.es]

Wishes are only wishes but dreaming is free. We people with a strong imaginative component never get tired of dreaming, and thus, never get bored. Sometimes dreams come true, and if experience shows but one thing in support of dreaming and wishing, it is this unbeatable truth: anything can happen, and specially for a collector of old 78s, anything can pop up anyplace anytime. It's a sort of scarce and unreliable source for record collectors, but amazingly, for all its uncertainty and serendipity, a real real treasure, if you keep your eyes wide opened. 

Last November I happen to go with my loved one to the usual place, ten minutes walking away from home, for the usual Saturday evening beer and food, and our doses of humble fun and chatting with neighbour friends. It happened that we were a bit early, so we decided to go first for a short walk by the streets around the place, before entering the bar for our refreshments. 
There was the avenue, solitary at these evening hours, and there were the empty benches along the sidewalk. Empty... all but one. In Madrid these late times, there is a blessed non-spoken consensus among certain 'careful' loving people, about what to do when you want to discard old books and the like. You dump into the container the usual rubbish, old furniture, etc., but things that are likely to be of certain interest for others, as books, you make instead a careful pile of them on the floor beside the trash bin, or on a nearby bench. 

So there we were, and what was there, carefully piled on a street bench seat beside a trash container? A bunch of LPs. Wife shouted me: records!!! But I was already there browsing among a big bunch of LPs of what seemed an old collection coming from a church or a religious college, for they were mostly LPs of hymns and some regional music. While browsing, collector's eyes spotted very fast some nude records, no jacket, wider grooves and heavier material... you know. Among the LPs there were a dozen 78s, mostly late thirties'-early forties' spanish Odeon 10" pressings of hymns and christmas carols, but also some other stuff, like three Pathé hill-and-dale records (one broken, what a pity), and one old interesting spanish Gramofono (HMV) record, a late teens' re-issue in double--sided form of two older single sided recordings. A 12" beauty, green label, gold lettering, full colour Nipper. It contains two band selections by the good old spanish 'Banda del Real Cuerpo de Guardias Alabarderos', a nice group whose recordings are very good. Two recordings dated 1909-1911. A record that some spanish kind-of Nauck (www.carlosmb.com) prices at no less than 50 euro...! 

Keep your eyes wide opened. 

And now the psychoilogic torture... What could I have found if I only happened to pass by an hour earlier...? What more is outta dere waiting...? I should spend some saturday evenings strolling the streets and peeping through rubbish piles and trash containers...! Actually I ALWAYS peep into trash containers when I spot them in the street in front of a house where a major upgrading is being carried on. There is the remote possibility that old heavy things like piles of 78s laid there abandoned in the empty house when proprietors moved away. The pity is that if there are any, these things go first into the trash bin when workers come in, so if they were there, they are likely at the bottom, under the pile of construction debris, old doors and windows, bricks and pannels, and the like... 

Inigo, from these days rainy Madrid, Spain.