These Wheatstone & Co. price lists have been collected by Chris Algar of Barleycorn Concertinas over the last twenty-five years. They have mostly been found in concertina cases with few hints to date them.

The approximate dates ascribed to the price lists here are based on internal evidence, as follows:

1. Address: Wheatstone moved from Conduit Street to West Street in 1905, where they remained until after the war. Parts of the operation were moved to other locations around 1946 and 1951, but the West Street flagship remained until around 1956.
2. Postcode: The basic postcode areas (e.g., "W.C.") from the late nineteenth century were augmented with numbers (e.g., "W.C.2") added in 1917.
3. Telegraph Address: some are "Clef", some (later) "Clef, WestCent".
4. Telephone Office: the prefix "Central" is used until it is overstamped with "Gerrard", which is used until it is in turn overstamped with "Temple Bar".
5. Awards: most lists carry dated award medals, but the latest is 1908.
6. Dates and Events Mentioned: rubber stamps and printed notes mention the British Empire Exhibition of 1924, and the Concertina Centenary in 1929 (on one list the date of the centenary contains a typographic error, corrected by hand). An overstamp marks the incorporation of Lachenal & Co., probably 1934–1935.
7. Printers' Dates: tiny lines supplied by the printer sometimes record the size of the press run and the date of printing.
8. Trademark Registration: Numbered trademarks for "Æola" (440676) and "Wheatstone" (440677) were assigned to Wheatstone & Co. by successive registrations in September 1923, and so the numbers cannot have been known earlier.
9. Pitch: some lists offer tuning in C=540 described as "Old Philharmonic Pitch" or "English Concertina Pitch", some offer tuning in C=522 described as "New Philharmonic Pitch" or "Modern Low-Pitch New Philharmonic", some offer a choice. (Both pitches were well-established by this period, but Wheatstone changed from 540 to 522. The current C=523.3 [A=440] pitch is mostly post-World War II, stemming from an international agreement in 1939.)
10. "Æola" and "octagonal": only some lists offer these models. (The earliest known Duet Æolas appear to have been produced in December 1910; English Æolas--not necessarily octagonal--appear in the Production Ledgers from September 1889.)
11. Tutors Listed: some lists offer no tutors (presumably not yet published), others offer them at various prices reflecting successive revisions. The first English tutor was offered by Wheatstone at 5 shillings, rising to 6 shilings. The first duet tutor was published by Wheatstone in 1914; revisions were first 2/6 and then 4/6.
12. Model Numbers: we can check the model numbers offered against the production records in the Wheatstone Concertina Ledgers at the Horniman Museum, London. For example, model 32 as a 46-key instrument with non-steel reeds is last seen in the Production Ledgers about 1920; a different model 32, with 39 keys and steel reeds, is first made about 1934. The price lists reflect such changes. The traditional model numbers are replaced with a new nomenclature using one digit for size and one letter for system ("1E", "2D", "3A", and so forth) about 1947, following the war.
13. Prices: surprisingly, the variations in prices do not seem to be of much help in dating.

Robert Gaskins, Chris Algar, Randall Merris, and Wes Williams joined in the project to assign dates to the price lists. Additional documents were contributed by Mike Eichner and Jim Lucas.

Contents

• Wheatstone Anglo Concertina Pricelists
• Wheatstone Anglo/Duet Pricelist c. 1910
• Wheatstone Pricelist c. 1947
• Wheatstone Pricelist c. 1950
• Wheatstone Pricelist c. 1955
• Wheatstone Pricelist c. 1956
• Wheatstone Pricelist c. 1965

• See Also
  More Concertina Pricelists

Links to related documents