Musical antiques are among the scarcest and most esoteric types of antiques on the marketplace, making them an excellent investment. At Solvang Antiques, you will find a wide variety of musical antiques to enjoy and collect, including music boxes, phonographs, and more.
Few things can stimulate and delight the senses as music does. Automatic antique musical instruments were one of the most important status symbols of their day, yet only a small percentage of today’s population will ever hear one—or even know—that antique music boxes exist.
Swiss cylinder music boxes were only made in quantity from 1880 to 1895. In the capable and ambitious music box industry, large-scale cylinder boxes were made with powerful movements playing a variety of sophisticated musical arrangements, typically on one fixed cylinder. If price was no object, the buyer could commission a music box with multiple interchangeable cylinders and even specify the tunes they desired.
Disc music boxes are equally scarce, made between 1885 and 1905. The Germans and Americans dominated this market, with only a small percentage of disc boxes produced in Switzerland. Today, you'll find these antiques in varying qualities and sizes, from playing discs of 6” diameter up to machines playing 27” discs.
The phonograph was a music-playing device developed as a result of Thomas Edison’s work on two other inventions: the telegraph and the telephone. In January 1896, he started the National Phonograph Company after he had bought back the rights to his inventions from businessman Jesse H. Lippincott, who had seen the potential use of the phonograph only in the business field and not for musical enjoyment.
If you have any questions about Solvang Antiques’ collection of musical antiques for sale, contact our team. Click here to visit our video page and see examples of the types of exclusive musical antiques available online. For more information on some of these mentioned topics, please click on the desired link below: