Scarce Edison Phonograph Monthly Collector Book #12 NEW

Description

This is the #12 book in the 14 book series published by Wendell Moore of reprinted Edison Phonograph Monthly dealer magazines that were sent to dealers early in the last century.
You will not find a greater source of information about the Edison Company than that which is contained in these volumes.  Each month, the Edison Phonograph Company sent out to its dealers a trade magazine that listed artist biographical info, new music releases, suggestions for dealer displays, new technology developments, seasonal information and advertising of it's products. If you follow these volumes, you will also follow the changes within the Edison Company as far as movement from 2 minute cylinders to 4 minute cylinders to the release of Diamond Disc records as-well-as the the release and withdrawal of certain products. If you want to know and see what went on behind the scenes, you will need to have a set of these books to give you that perspective. They are chock full of pictures and details and  I have taken a few pictures to give you an idea of what is contained within each one of these books.
The pictures I have included in volume 12 include a recording session of Navajo Indian boys, some dealer store pics as well as the executives of the store, a lot of info on the new Diamond Disc, a dealer's interest chart, and a very interesting and funny article on how cigarettes (actually the outside papers) are bad for your health circa 1914.
There is a lot of information, but this is all I've included for the sake of this write up.  It is especially interesting to read all the "inside" info as far as selling notes, problem accounts, and how to deal with defective parts and difficult customers.  Please excuse the lack of sharpness on a couple of the pictures.  The actual book has crisp, clean artwork.
At this point, I have purchased the remaining copies of all the EPM's from Wendell Moore.  As I list this volume, it should be noted that several of the volumes are permanently out of print having been sold over the past few years.
I have conversed on numerous occasions with Wendell Moore about these EPM books and the story about how they came to be.  The story he has told me is that in the 70's he was visiting a town and asked the owner of a local pharmacy about whether he (the pharmacist) knew of anyone who might have phonographs to sell.   Apparently Wendell had found that asking the question led him to some neat discoveries in his travels. In this situation, the Pharmacist pointed out a customer standing nearby...a woman. When Wendell asked her about phonographs, she told him that he needed to talk to her husband.  Wendell followed the woman to her home and was shown into a room with a sickly man who spent the next hour telling Wendell about being an Edison dealer in the early 1900s.  After an hour, Wendell got up to leave and the man pointed out a closet door that Wendell was to open.  Wendell found a box on the top shelf that the man asked him to take along and Wendell told me it was filled with phonograph literature dating from that era.  Wendell said that he did not want to just take the literature so offered some money to the man which was accepted.
At this point, Wendell told me that he sat the box on the front seat of his car next to himself as he then proceeded to drive out of town.  A few miles down the road and while driving, Wendell said that he was curious so he opened the box and began flipping through the material and what he saw stunned him so much that he told me he stopped the car in the middle of the road.  There in the box was a complete set of Edison Phonograph Monthly dealer journals.  Wendell told me that theses journals were exceedingly rare and that only a few had turned up over the years and were prized by collectors.  Here now, in this box, was a set from the first one of March 1903 to last one of December 1916.  Wendell then determined to have these EPM journals reprinted for the benefit of all collectors and he released one book a year over the span of 14 years. According to Wendell, there were about 500 complete sets printed, but since the individual books were sold as a subscription, some sets were never completed.  Thus, there are, according to Wendell, less than 400 complete sets in circulation.  As a postscript, Wendell informed me that the man who gave him the original journals passed away about a month after his visit with him.  We both speculated that it is likely that his family would have tossed "those old papers" had his timely visit not taken place.
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