I see lots of worn-down 78s too. The clean ones are often the ones no one cared to listen to twice – unless you are lucky and they belonged to an audiophile who actually followed the manufacturer's advice, played each needle only once or twice, and kept the records in sleeves. Maybe Classical Music collectors were more likely to belong to the audiophile category than the average pop music fan.
Generally, records surely are a bad investment. That $2.00 in 1916, when your copy was made, is equivalent to $44.95 in 2017. So this record experienced a huge drop in value. Good for us as long as we buy them to enjoy the music, bad for those who get to clean out the collection when we are gone.
Thanx xiphophilos 4 the comments and the calculator!! I paid $0.66 cents 4 my copy here in a thrift store in Washington DC over the weekend, which (according 2 your calculator) would be roughly $0.02 cents in 1908!! 87 records in a box at $0.66 cents each!! ☺
No wonder why so many of the 78 RPM records I find are in such clean shape, a few still in 100 year old sleeves?!? Buying a phonograph record back then was a real investment!! Dang, records WEREN'T cheap back then, so u took GOOD care of those suckas!! I go into thrift stores these days and see loads of beat-2-heck 45 RPM singles and albums next 2 these clean, lovingly cared-4 78 RPM records...
The 87000-series, which was introduced in 1906, justified its high price of $2.00 (then ca. $50.00 in today's money) with the fact that the singer was accompanied by an entire orchestra, not just a single piano. That price didn't keep people from buying Caruso records and remained stable for the next 13 years, that is, it actually decreased in value, since $2 in 1918 was only the equivalent of ca. $32 today). In July 1919, the price was drastically reduced to just $1.00 (then ca. $14 in today's money), but then shellac prices increased so much that the price had to be lifted to $1.25 (or $15) as early as August 1920.
Starting in 1903, Victor charged even more, $5 per disc (or ca. $130.00 today!), for the Italian tenor Francesco Tamagno, for the Australian soprano Nellie Melba, and for the soprano Adelina Patti. And for one recording, the 1908 release of "Chi Mi Frena", the sextette from Gaetano Donizetti's opera "Lucia di Lammermoor", on Victrola 96200, which featured six stars from the Metropolitan and Manhattan Opera Company (Marcella Sembrich, Gina Severina, Enrico Caruso, Antonio Scotti, Marçel Journet, and Francesco Daddi), Victor demanded a whopping $7.00, that is in today's money, $175.00!
Label variant scan added. Whoa - this record cost $2.00 whole bucks!! Lemme get this straight: In an era when a regular, two-sided record usually cost $0.75 cents, this ONE-SIDED record cost more than twice as much?!? A day's salary 4 a ONE-SIDED phonograph record??!! Granted, Caruso was a really cool singer, but great-googly-moogly?!?...
My copy is a later "bat wing" label reissue:
Spring 1918 to Fall 1923 Victrola Batwing label listing three patents (1903, 1905, and 1908) and no price notice, cf. M. W. Sherman, Collector's Guide to Victor Records, 2nd ed., page 84.