About & method · Pre-war and wartime record sleeves up to 1945

Very little reliable help exists for dating the paper sleeves that 78 rpm records came in. This site gathers what we have been able to establish, so that other collectors can use it, check it and improve it.

Scope

The site covers sleeves printed or used before the end of the Second World War: pre-war and wartime sleeves up to 1945. It includes dealers’ bags from individual shops and record companies’ own sleeves, British and from elsewhere in Europe, with two American Victor sleeves. Where a design carried on after 1945, the page says so, but the focus stays on the years to 1945. Some research on later sleeves (South African and Belgian Decca, and British Parlophone, HMV and Regal Zonophone sleeves of 1947–1956) is outside this site’s scope and is not published here.

How the dates are worked out

A sleeve rarely carries a date. Instead we look for things on it that changed at known times:

a shop’s address, telephone number or trade description, checked against street directories;
the record brands, artists or catalogue numbers it advertises, checked against label histories and discographies;
place names, company names and addresses that were only used for a certain period;
photographs of the same design holding records whose dates are known.

From these we give a print window, the period in which the sleeve was most likely printed, and a likely period of use, which is usually longer. Where we can only give a range, we give a range rather than a single year.

Two cautions

Old stock was used up. Record companies and dealers often went on using printed sleeves long after a design was replaced, so overlaps of a year or more are normal.
A record in a sleeve proves little. A record found in a sleeve today is not proof that the sleeve is original to that issue. Sleeves were swapped by shops, owners and later collectors, and only a minority of 78s survive in the sleeve they were sold in.

How sure we are

DocumentedA source states the fact directly: a directory, a label history, a museum record, a discography.
ObservedThe design has been seen with a record of known date, in a photograph or in the hand. This is weaker than documented, because the record may not be original to the sleeve.
InferredOur own reasoning from the documented and observed evidence. We say when a conclusion depends on it.
Not yet researchedSomething we have not been able to check yet.

Each page also gives an overall confidence, from low to high, and ends with what we could not find. Sources are linked so you can check them, and nothing here should be taken as the final word.

Who is behind it

These are research notes prepared for Simon Dodkins, a collector of pre-war and wartime 78s based in Jersey. Photographs of sleeves are from his collection unless a page says otherwise. Where we have only seen a design in other people’s photographs, we describe it in words and link to the source instead of copying the image. This is a private collector’s project, not an archive, museum or company.

A work in progress