$37,000 For a 78
I was cleaning out some old emails and came across an article someone had sent me about a collector spending $37,000 on a rare 78-RPM blues record: Rare Tommy Johnson 1930 Blues 78 Rpm Record Goes for $37,100 on eBay. It led me to another article from a few years back on a similar subject: They’ve Got Those Old Hard-To-Find Blues. And I thought we jazz collectors were crazy.:)
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I don’t know where exactly the line is, but that fellow has definitely crossed it.
Hmm…this makes the folks spending “only” a few thousand for a jazz lp seem thrifty by comparision. Great article,but sanity has left the building!
Think he crossed the line a couple of galaxies ago but i agree that it’s a great article and interesting as well.
Ehrrr… Al? The link for “Rare Tommy Johnson 1930 Blues 78 Rpm Record Goes for $37,100 on eBay” redirects to Sonny Rollins Plays on Period”. Not to the Tommy Johnson…
Link should be fixed.
If you think about it, that guy is investing that money for a good, good cause: to make sure that this music sees a re-release to prevent it from sliding into oblivion.
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Listening to the samples of all those old blues 78s that he managed to recover, re-discover and reissue, I can only have the utmost respect for him, despite the -indeed- insane prices he’s willing to pay for these priceless gems.
Ah, Mattyman I did not read the article until just now. If he is helping get old music reissued, then he is a saint and should be applauded.
@Al: thanks, link works now.
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@Gregory the Fish: absolutely. Reading those horror stories of lost or destroyed metal work on top of the fact that in some cases the 78s mentioned are the last two or three in existence, it is clear that what he does is priceless.
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He should be subsidized. After all it seems that nobody else is doing it and given the amounts he spends to secure this fabulous part of American blues history should be the perfect reason for it.
That much for a lousy blues record? Why do people fap off over that genre? Fuck spending that much money on such garbage, and fuck those who suck up to him for doing so.