Part of me knows this is silly – vinyl is cumbersome, fragile, and most of the records you can see in the picture don’t exactly sound good. I think they spent too long around me and my brothers judging by the finger marks, scratches, and occasional strange substances to be found.

But, I’m sold on the idea, and am sticking to my convictions, for several reasons…

Vinyl makes you care about what you’re listening to more than any medium. I’m listening to London Calling as I type, which has four sides. This interactivity, annoying to some, encourages me to sit and listen – to properly pay attention.

It looks fantastic in our living room! It’s now the centre piece, encouraging us to sit around and listen/talk about great records.

The CD is dead, long live Vinyl! Ok, bold statement, but hear me out.. CDs made a lot of sense at the time, but digital music has just evolved so well that the only reason you’d want to buy a CD is to own the artefact – which is clearly something lots of us still like to do. But in a world where we’re listening to music almost entirely on computers and iPods, to buy purely for the artefact’s sake is just so much more rewarding on 12″. 

The decline of physical CD sales has been on the cards for ages. Now it’s happening, people seem to be moaning about it. Personally, if CDs decline I don’t mind too much, provided I can get high quality digital files, and provided I can still buy vinyl for my collection.

If vinyl can survive 20 years of CD dominance, and still be the first thing you see when you walk into Rough Trade East, for instance, then I think it’ll be around for a while yet. 

Here’s to wishful thinking anyway.

So far I’ve managed to date them to 1930s, but no more specific than that. Any help appreciated!

Sadly the box is in quite poor condition.. I took the records out and put them in separate sleeves 10 years ago, but the box had already suffered quite a bit. The records themselves though are in really good condition.

The story goes that my Great Grandmother probably bought them second hand. That’s our best guess anyway. We’re not one of those families with display cabinets full of interesting heritage.. in fact, I barely know my grandparent’s history, forget the generation above. So this I find really interesting!

UPDATE: Thanks to Norman Field these have now been dated to no later than 1929! At least, Parlophone advertised them in the November 1929 issue of Gramaphone magazine.