![]() ![]() Towards the end of November, the First World War Commemoration group in our village put on a concert. When you buy needles today expect them in a poly bag These days a tin in good order (which this one isn’t) is deemed collectible. However 200 needles might cost you more like £10 although you can shop around and get them cheaper. From memory, back in the 1960s they cost half a crown for two hundred needles in a tin. Inside, this tin still has plenty of the thin soft tone needles. The tin has a little advert around the edge of the lid.Įlectrical records – using a microphone rather than a horn to make the recording, came in in 1925 and rapidly became pretty well universal. We can see these were made of Sheffield steel and have the advice to ‘use once only. And they came in neat little tins which suffered a bit from years of loft storage. They were (and are) of the type known as Songster needles. We bought thousands of them and I still use them to this day – 50 years on. He had real foresight back in the 1960s and stocked me up with items I still use – old steel gramophone needles.Ī shop in Bexhill – my dad’s original home town, had a stock of needles back in the 1960s. For advertising purposes it was also common for dealers to have tins produced with their own name and details on the underside so, as you can imagine, the scope for variation in needle tins is huge with some collections running into 100s or even 1000s of examples.I owe something to my father here. “There were also makes like Songster and Embassy which were needle brands in their own right and each of these would be available in a range of thickness (soft, medium or loud), various different designs and, quite often, different colours. “Consequently needles were produced in huge quantities by manufacturers in Great Britain and Germany and there were popular brands which represented the makers of machines such as Columbia, Decca and HMV together with record labels such as Regal. Looking online, Dickinson’s gramophone needle tin obsession is obviously shared by others.Īccording to one of the collector websites (for gramophones as a whole), : “The market for steel needles was vast as the majority were designed to be used only once before being replaced, so an average sized tin of 200 wouldn’t last too long. The tins from his collection to be sold in the auction include many from around the world, including scarce examples, as well as many variations of well-known UK brands.” Getting the needle “Subsequently, this interest, as well as his collection, grew quickly and within seven years his collection amounted to over 800 tins. The saleroom says: “As a musician, artist and design teacher, the miniaturised graphics with a music connection represented in gramophone needle tins established an immediate attraction and sparked his interest. ![]() The group includes many scarce tins from brands manufactured in the UK, Germany, France, Japan, Czechoslovakia, the US and elsewhere. It consists of more than 600 tins to be sold individually or as multiple lots of up to 10 or more. The unexpected consequences of that present are now on offer at Barbara Kirk Auctions in Penzance, Cornwall, where his collection will be offered as a dedicated section on the second day the May 1-2 Antiques, Art & Collectors sale. His interest was sparked by a seemingly light-hearted Valentine’s Day gift of a HMV needle tin from his partner. They became one of the passions of Julian Dickinson (1956-2013), who was already a collector of antique chess sets and games, guitars and vinyl records. ![]() Enjoy unlimited access: just £1 for 12 weeks Subscribe now ![]()
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