I just recently acquired this rare beauty and was not only thrilled with the near perfect condition, but the extras. I get more excited about the additional inserts sometimes than about the catalog itself. This edition is no exception. I have never seen this catalog in person and don’t think the additional pieces exist anywhere else, because I’ve never seen these before either. Many of these very early catalogs come in all shapes and sizes and this one is no different. It’s an odd size of 7 3/4” x 9 7/8”. It’s a thick 88 pages long with a heavy cardstock cover with a cloth fabric binding. Most catalogs with this type of fiber cover really don’t hold up well being paged through because they tend to crack and break off very easily.
Inside we find a nice selection of early single drums, hardware and a huge plethora of individual sound mimicking instruments. The sound machines were extremely popular on the radio and live theatre stage shows, and if you had a great selection you probably got hired! The inserts range from a very interesting poem about a drummer, a price list, a drum pedal sales pitch on purple and white parchment paper to a brochure touting their “perfection bells”.
It’s also interesting that every single drum and piece of equipment in this catalog starts with the name perfection, I think they were really trying to make a point here, ha. All in all a pretty slick presentation for 1916!
Edward Tucker's Catalog Corner 1916 Walberg & Auge
