My mother, God bless her heart, thinks she's doing me a solid by picking up old records from garage sales. But she lives in Southern Wisconsin and the kind of records you find over there at garage sales are downright horrible. This time it was boxes of Firestone Tire Christmas boxsets, Elvis Christmas, Tommy Vinton Christmas, and all of it destroyed, scratched, moldy, dirty, stanking, rotted broken shit.

It's literally the absolute worst record haul you can possibly imagine. Along with every common country and every 70s soft rock is a handful of super old 78s. When I say super old I mean SUPER old.

One of them had the date 1904, others right around 1914. A few of them are broken all of them are filthy, but a few of them are salvageable considering their age. I think they are like marching band style music, IE old long-dead white people music.

So this box of rotten stank is sitting in the trunk of my car. I salvaged about 4 out of 100 for my own use, they are filthy need Spin Clean, but they have some value to me if not for my ears at least 5 bucks worth of store credit at the record store.

The rest of it is worthless to the local record store guy. If he took the time out of his day to look at the stuff he'd be pissed I wasted his time because he's got stockpiles of the stuff he can't get rid of and his stuff is in better shape.

I don't even wanna gift them to Good Will, they will end up trashing most of them since they are scratched, and otherwise just unbearably filthy.

I don't want to abandon them in the local dumpster at my office either for one reason, and one reason only...

CUZ SOME OF THAT SHIT IS FROM 1904! I have no use for them but I can't throw away sound time capsules! I can't toss history in the dumpster. I've never seen a 78 from 1904 before, that's gotta be worth something to someone, right??

TLDR Question: Does anyone have any use for old 78s that aren't particularly good but may be of minor historical significance? What should I do with these archaic black discs?

It's a stretch but maybe in the town it was made it might mean something to the great great granddaughter, right??

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That sounds like a crazy dilemma. Anything with mold I am always dicey about because I don't want to breathe in that stuff. Not only that but if you contaminate your cleaning equipment with it, it will get on your other records too and start growing. Anything with mold I usually leave alone, even if it is a record I want.

I can't really help you with 78s since I don't collect them, sorry. I would try to Google some of the artists when you have time. Never know what could be in there.

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^^ agree with this . Be careful with the mold homey . Bleach is one of the very few things that will kill mold and I can't imagine what it would do to a 78 . I also have no knowledge on 78s other than my mom has a box of them in her basement that she tries to pawn off on me when I'm over there .

^Some record collector somewhere has figured out how to deal with mold on 78s I'm sure. I know that a lot of cleaners like diluted alcohol and stuff shouldn't be used on 78s because they are made of shellac not vinyl, and it can damage them. I would do a little research before trying to clean them, and try to at least pre-clean them with cleaning equipment that's not going to touch your other stuff. The trouble will be getting rid of the mold on paper sleeves and stuff like that. No idea how to do that.

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Thanks for the feedback guys. My trunk now smells like some kinda trunk funk. It's not a good funky, it's a bad funky. I'm thinking of lightening load right about now. Good Will here I come.

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“Lesser artists borrow... great artists steal.” - Igor Stravinsky
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