For years I thought that the definition of a rare record was one that wasn't in my collection, but when I started doing research on record sales I started to realize that there was a reason that I couldn't find "Consolodated", "Improved", or "Pre-Dog" Victors and 23,000 series Victors in every stack of records that I looked at.
During 1900 and 1901 Victor had record sales of, 36,965 and 256,908 units. Sales were never less than 1,696,296 units from 1902 up through 1941. Sales kept climbing until peaking at 54,920,855 in 1921. 1922 and 1923 show record sales under 40,000,000 and an increase of just over 40,000,000 in 1924. Sales in 1925 again declined to a post war low of under 30,000,000. Sales for the years 1926 through 1929 were in excess of 30 million per year with a decline to approximately 17 million in 1930, 7 million in 1931, and 3,119,049 in 1932. Of the 3,119,049 records sold in 1932, 812,862 were of the 23,000 series. The recordings from 23,250 through 23,722 break down as follows:
Of the 701,881 country recordings Jimmie Rodgers sold 345,582 or 49.24% and the Carter Family sold 130,118 or 18.54%. The total being 475,700 that is approximately 68%. This left but 32% to be divided between all other artists. Country sales (less the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers) totaled 226,181 units. The analysis of the data concludes that the race and country recordings of 1932 - 1935 are the rarest group of recordings. Note: Record sales data on other record labels was not available for analysis. For this study it is assumed that the ratio of Jazz Vs Pop Vs Country Vs Blues, etc. is similar to the ratio in this study for all labels.
The rarest grouping of records are the Jazz, Blues, and Country (excluding Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family) records that were recorded 1932 - 1935. This is the reason that "Champion", "Crown", "Timely Tunes", "Electradisc", and all series of record labels covering this period are almost impossible to find. Luckily, today we can purchase CD or LP re-issues of much of the rare material. If you enjoy the music from this period start looking for the LP and CD re-issues. If you don't and are expecting to find the original recordings in someone's attic you may win the lottery before you find the records and you still will not have heard the music.
1. Annual Sales from "The Collectors Guide To Victor Records" by Michael W. Sherman 2. Race / Western sales from 78 Quarterly Vol. 1 No. 5 HOME TID BITS