Another concertina curiosity from Ebay

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Maybe its been modified by our Swedish chum

that...is passing strange...

Ebay is very entertaining. Make money and earn swell prizes too! Anyway, I noticed that one also. What do you suppose is the story with the strap across the top? Is it like the straps that hold accordions together when out of service? Maybe the screw has been fitted with a snap on one side. It has the look of solid rosewood though. Based on the picture I bid $50.
E

And Lester, I need to stop prowling around Ebay too!

It's not the prowling that's the problem - it's the buying. Ay de mi!

Chris

Sez he who encourages me to buy the Jeffries . I just can't decide which smiley face to use.
E

..............its got me curious too.On the one hand the key layout looks like an English..............but those 6-fold bellows;surely too robust. A Duet ??
Lets hear from the diaspora.
Robin

I know just what you mean Chris, its addictive, I'm acquiring a serious eBay "habit", I already seem to need two or three "fixes" a week. Where will it all end ? Maybe I will soon be having to "score" a 120-bass every day ! (And then where will I be ?)

On a more serious note, I have come across similar D.I.Y. handstraps on English concertinas before. Some people may have done it as an "improvement", to make the instrument easier to hold (though most of us would find the opposite, and that their hands were very cramped by it), but I think it was more often done because someone was defeated by the prospect of making new thumbstraps.

Mind you, I was looking through the Wheatstone ledgers (from the 1930's) last night, and came across a curious reference to what appears to have been an English concertina with rails and handstraps, but I was looking for something else and didn't make a note of the number. (Mea culpa !)


Sounds like me !

#33622?

Check out this Topic from last September.

Touche, indeed threeche. But I never claimed consistency.

Chris

Thanks Jim !

That was it (and I have).

re....Trawling eBay.I do it too;I look everyday.However I am not looking for concertinas to buy ; but for those of us who are fascinated by their beauty and variety its an opportunity to see different instrumentsand be amazed.If I lived in London I would visit the Horniman once a month.

Robin

I lied in the second sentence..............I would love to buy five more concertinas.

You and me both, Robin!

But I did promise the spouse we could save up for a good garden tiller, a gas grill, and a shed to put them in.

And he's mumbling something about wanting a motorcycle...

All of which, of course, will put a SERIOUS dent in my concertina budget!

But I occasionally bid on some of the English ones on Ebay. I would love an inexpensive (read: really cheap) 48-button to try, kind of like the EC equivalent of my recently demised Hohner.

Perhaps we need to start a pool in which we all place a concertina on e-bay and sell them to each other just for the rush.

But what if some "outsider" wins the bidding?

we'd have to kill them...

I think you'll find that's against eBay's Terms and Conditions of Use (item 98 paragraph 9 sub-clause 25).

Cris

I say Jim, the "Boxers" are rebelling again !

I think "revolting" is the term.

and they certainly are revolting!

I was trying to be polite (and historically correct).

But I realise that it then ruins the punchline : "I know, I smelt them when I came in !"

(I wonder just how old that joke is, Music-Hall perhaps ?)

Mind you, you do see some interesting things on ebay. The current haul includes an Angolan concertina, and it would appear that concertinas from Angola are a particularly violent shade of blue. Not many people know that!

Chris

I have noticed some of those Angola concertinas. This must explain all the nonsense about the terms English and Anglo. It should be English and Angolan. Thanks to the internet we've straightened that out. As to the blue color we can only hope to learn more as time goes on.
E

I think that comes from trying to breathe in synchrony with the bellows changes.