Hello Everyone! As many of you know, we sent pictures of our Mystery Victor III to the Victor-Victrola site for a formal appraisal and authentication. The experts on the site did an amazing job researching our machine and provided us with an extremely complete appraisal! The appraisal cost was only $19.95 and I would highly recommend them to anyone who has a rare machine that they need more information on. With their permission, I wanted to post the information about our machine here for anyone who is interested. We had never heard of a Vernis-Martin Victor or Victrola before and felt that we learned so much from this experience. Our goal is to share this information with the group so that you can all learn about it too. Just in case anyone else runs into a gold Victor with a strange cabinet.
Thank you all for your help in the process of figuring this machine out! Melissa FROM THE APPRAISAL: In the early days of the industry, a small number of distributors commissioned custom cabinets for Victor or Edison equipment. Often this consisted of elaborately carved cabinets with space to store a great number of records. In time, more elaborate and colorful cabinets were offered. A particularly popular finish was the Vernis Martin finish which was fundamentally a gold imitation lacquer finish applied to a cabinet. The Vernis Martin finish was offered either as a totally gold cabinet or a gold cabinet decorated with French influenced oil paintings. The less expensive Vernis Martin cabinets were imitation of gold, created by suspending gold or copper powder in a varnish. The more expensive cabinets used real gold leaf as a base coat and often used oil paintings as decorative element. These finishes were offered by a number of distributors, who each had contracted with a local furniture manufacturing company to supply the cabinets. The distributors would buy the standard phonograph mechanisms and hardware directly from Victor, and would arrange to have the special cabinets made to order. Today, we do not know the complete story of the cabinets, although we know that they were advertised by the Douglas Talking Machine Company as well as the Victor Distribution and Export Company, both distributors for Victor products who were located in New York. This example of a Victor III in a gold leaf cabinet shares some of the features of the special machines offered by the Victor Distributing and Export Company of NYC. While this exact instrument is not shown in any of the contemporary advertising, the evidence suggests that the cabinet was made by the same company that made the special cabinets offered by The Victor Distributing and Export Company. As an example, the molding on this example matches the molding used by The Victor Distribution and Export Company and shown in their ads. Examples of Victors with similar molding can be found at the Victorian Palace museum in Illinois, and in other collections. Most surviving examples were of the more expensive models, such as the Victor V or Victor VI products. It is quite possible that this machine originally was also supplied with a gold-leaf horn, or a polished brass horn. The tone arm, sound box, brake, speed control, crank, crank escutcheon and horn elbow need to be re-plated in gold. Some of these parts are currently missing or in such poor condition that replacements are required. The cabinet needs a great deal of attention, including replacement of a section of the top and the complete bottom. The Vernis Martin finish has reportedly been over-coated with a new finish and the original paintings are barely visible. The gold leaf is in poor shape and should be redone. The paintings will undoubtedly have to be completely redone, using the faint original painting as a guide. Once restored, the machine would potentially double in value, however it is impossible to predict the future value without examining the restored instrument and evaluating the quality of the restoration. A poor restoration could actually reduce the value of this Victor. Database Summary: There are currently 2,539 Victor III phonographs (standard oak cabinet) logged in the survival database: S/N 21274 appears between: · s/n 21261 (fair example sold on Ebay on December 5, 2002 for $425.00) · s/n 24319 (in private collection in New Jersey) There are only two other surviving Victor III Vernis Martin phonographs logged in the database, they are s/n 14888 and s/n 16003. Approximately 15 other Vernis Martin Victors have been recorded, including Victor MS, Victor V and Victor VI models. _______________________________________________ Phono-L mailing list http://phono-l.org
