Thanks for the info Steve.

Mike

If the story of Buddy Rich is true, then they are only three cymbals or little more around, suggests that they are prototypes of sizes that will be made in series only with the Trans Stamps, being prototypes no one can establish the price, certainly tends to high

those Stamps sound better than the Trans Stamp and much much rarer, so I would pay them more, even though the Avedis under the musical aspect do not interest me anymore, just for the historical interest ...

Actually I never meant my comments to be a poke at you, Zenstat. I made my comments in reference to Scott whatever his name is. Ane I am aware that you are doing some true research of your own. And it may surprise you to know that I've seen some of your work and I actually appreciate what you've done so far. I see that your work is thorough and analytical. As far as I can see you're the only one who's serious about it. I just wanted to be clear on this point because this this trademark anlysis subject is not about me all the time. I do appreciate your acknowledgment of my share of credit for what I've contributed thus far. I believe that whatever you can do that adds to the body of knowledge on this subject is good and appreciated by me personally. It's good to see it, so please keep it up.

As far as it concerns the others, as far as I'm aware of they have done nothing more than just to copy what's already been done before.

He is on point and gives credit where it's due. Plus he's more frequent.

The Buddy Rich story doesn't pass even the first level of screening for turning internet stories into quality evidence. There is a hierarchy of checks to establish such a claim. First up is: does the seller have the rest of his facts correct? Claiming the cymbal is approximately 97 years old puts it a few years before the Avedis Zildjian Co started up in 1929. So that's a fail.

The next level is does he have the full provenance of the cymbal? That means he has the name, location, and year of purchase for the previous owner -- and the one before that -- and the one before that if there is one -- right back to the factory. His story is

so that's a fail.

The next level of documentation is the paper trail. Are there receipts? Purchase orders? Letters of authentication? No paper evidence is presented. The alternative is photographs where the cymbal is uniquely identifiable, or perhaps old movie footage. But nothing is presented so that's another fail in the checklist.

I record these sorts of claims in my database, but those seller stories have to go through rigorous checks before they turn into reliable evidence. This one does not get past the first hurdle. That doesn't mean it isn't true. It means it has not been demonstrated to be true.

Your suggestion that these must be prototypes because there aren't very many currently recorded falls into a similar situation. I haven't been looking very long and there are a large number of people who don't get their identifications correct so we have no way of knowing how many others there are. All we know at present is these don't come up as often as smaller diameters. Here are the counts by diameter for these Pre Trans Stamp Cymbals:

22" 1

20" 3

18" 6

17" 1

16" 10

15" 11

14" 18

13" 13

12" 14

11" 12

10" 1

8" 1

In order to interpret this distribution we would need to compare it to the diameter distribution for other production eras. All we can really say at this point is that it tends to be dominated by cymbals with diameters between 11" and 16".

But remember this is not the numbers of different diameters which were produced back in the day. This is the numbers which have come up for sale over the past few years. Those are two different things. We try and infer the percentages produced from the percentages sold, but that requires lots more by way of assumptions and analysis work.

What stands out to me as unusual about this cymbal is the heavy weight. It is possible that it weighs 2960g but that is unexpected. You can see how unusual it is when you get back that far.

[img]http://black.net.nz/avedis/images/A20-weights-by-era.png[/img]

It weighs in at more like a PING or HEAVY model from decades later. That could be because it is a HEAVY model and/or an Orchestral cymbal. I've traced HEAVY model ink back that far thanks to JPTrickster:

[img]http://black.net.nz/avedis/images/15-1071-HEAVY.png[/img]

but it is still an extreme heavy outlier. It could be that the weight was done inaccurately (stand on bathroom scale without cymbal, stand on bathroom scale with cymbal, take the difference as weight of cymbal) or the conversion was done inaccurately (take a pounds/ounces weight and get your conversion to grams completely wrong). I have a handle on how often conversion errors occur from sellers who give both. The highly unusual weight adds to the uncertainty about the cymbal.

And finally I omitted to thank Chicago Dave for passing these links to me, and to Mile Layton who also keeps an eye out for these early ones.

Moving from an unusually heavy 20" back to your very light 14" here is some context for your weight. These 14" pre trans stamps run from 500g to 725g in my data in rounded numbers. Then there is a gap before you get to one which is 955g. Then there is another gap and two around 1250g. So yours is at the low in of the expected range for the lighter 14" cymbals from this era. It's all a matter of having the context. I presume that the heavier cymbals are marching band cymbals or similar. A similar pattern appears in the 15" size. And a similar pattern appears again in both 14" and 15" Trans Stamp cymbals.

As people have already mentioned once you get back to Trans Stamps, diameters are less exact as the circle shearing and edge trimming was not as precise as it is now. The rest of the features you describe in yours are all within the range of variation which has been documented for these. Again it is about having the context.

The expected prices and weights are covered on my site but you have to scroll down to the 14" single section.

http://black.net.nz/avedis/avedis-prices.html#14

Expected median price $99 (well, call it $100) with a range from $75 to $120 n=7

The Trans Stamp price is nearly the same: expected median price $91 with half selling for between $81 and $102 n=15

Given the low numbers we could equally well lump the two categories (Pre Trans and Trans) together, but I've kept them separate for now.

Zen, how do you collect the data? I had a 1650 gram A. 60s on Ebay for many months, then I sold it in private for around $250, but your chart that stamp starts at 2000 grams, maybe I did not understand well

How I collect data is a different question from how I present it in charts. The chart is a summary which uses statistical techniques to display the data but not get to bogged down in detail. If you have a look at this description of how to read the box plots:

http://black.net.nz/avedis/avedis-prices.html#Boxplots

you will see that the actual distribution goes down to the bottom of the whisker. That bottom whisker goes down to 1650g.

Today I've got 127 cymbals with 1960s trademark stamps on them in my database. There might be more later today because I'm about to do some more entry. Of these 127, 20 did not have a weight given. Of the 107 left the lightest 5 are:

1650g (25-Feb-2016, asking $290 (EUR280+ship) not sold on eBay)

1695g (THIN CRASH ink)

1708g

1718g

1790g (larger bell so presumed Crash or Crash Ride model)

and so on at that level of detail to an Earth Ride at 3368g. That first one is 99% likely yours. I've also got a link to a for sale thread on another site which included an iPhone sound file and photos, from an Italian based seller with a different screen name. ;)

I don't claim that my data collection is perfect and I've got 100% coverage, but its pretty good. Because your cymbal was marked as did not sell on eBay the price there does not enter into my price analysis. Now that I know it sold for $250 I can amend the record to show that as well.

Doing this sort of research is best likened to an iceberg floating on the water. About 10% of the work appears above the surface of the water. But 90% is invisible below. That includes a huge amount of data collection, data cleaning and deduplication, "sanity checks" using previous data models to vet new observations which are outliers, statistical analysis and modelling of the results with new data added, selection of what results to show, and finally posting information for free public use which has been thoroughly vetted.

I mentioned model ink before and as you can imagine that is another apparently simple summary which requires a lot of data collection to find examples from different production eras with still have model ink intact, and where a plausible weight is given. It isn't just looking for a needle in a haystack. It is looking for a particular piece of hay in a haystack when all the pieces of hay look very similar and have to be examined one at a time.

A specific example of data cleaning is corrections to incorrect identifications by sellers which means examining every photo in detail. Having kept track of the discrepancies those form another analysis

http://black.net.nz/avedis/avedis-prices.html#confusion-matrix

which shows that 25% of Avedis Zildjian cymbals for sale are either unidentified by the seller, or misidentified as to production era.

ok, now i understand, very great job

that cymbal I had given away for a little less, about $240, but together with other 4 pieces, for a total discounted price ... it was a super paperthin with a lot of patina and a nice sound, at the end a little expensive