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AMost people think that Bakelite plastic was used to make these older 78rpm records. However, it was actually a product made from beetles called Shellac.

I don’t have great news for you, sadly, as approximately 90 per cent of all old 78rpm records have no real commercial value.

Sought after records tend to be operatic 78s, recorded in a foreign language and single-sided only (i.e. from 1898-1923). There are only perhaps 500-odd collectors around the globe who will buy these examples. I own a Whitefriars glass “Banjo” vase made, I think, in the 1960s and purple or lilac in colour. It has a few chips but still looks stylish. What might it be worth? Sally Robertson, Ealing, West London Whitefriars, from the 1830s, became one of Britain’s most important creators of glass tableware and stained glass. Geoffrey Baxter was the senior designer in the 1960s and produced the famous “Drunken Bricklayers” vases too. Banjo vases like yours, from the mid 1960s, would possibly make €1,100 in tip-top shape or perhaps €330 damaged. Banjo vase

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