Recently I made a somewhat spur-of-the-moment eBay purchase of a sliver plated Schmidt model Conn. A little more on that in a minute.
The item I think of more general interest is the packing material, which was new to me.
The eBay seller used this packing material. And I was very impressed.
The product is marked SealedAir Instapack Quick RT. Looking online, I see it is carried by ULINE. As I’m understanding the product, you gently knead the product in the bag and it expands to fill the space and hardens. In the case of this horn, in the picture you can see how it formed right around the horn, the three bags of the product completely encasing the horn.
The only downside I can see is that the material isn’t really reusable, although you could break it up and use it as filler in some way.
Context: I had just received another horn on eBay that was “packed” much less well. What are people out there thinking? But this seller, I’m so impressed by this packing material. Wanted to get the word out! This is news for the horn world.
The horn?
Oh, the horn is an original Conn 6D, which we’d more commonly today call a Schmidt-model Conn. Silver plated! It was made in probably the 1920s sometime and was made for the military. It is beautifully engraved USQMC (United States Quartermaster Corps). It had taken a fall at some point in the past, and looked like this when I got it out of the box.
The visible damage is the same as in the listing. There was also one other curious thing on the back that I had not noticed.
It’s a bit hard to see, but check out this close up.
There’s no serial number; it was long ago (note the patina) filed off. I don’t know if that was done when it left the Army or if the horn has some darker history or some quirky prior owner. It’s a bummer as I can’t date the horn exactly.
As to the horn itself, other than the big dents it’s in amazing condition. None of the slides were stuck, it just needed one valve string and oil and grease to get it playable. A very promising horn, which will be striking looking when it is all cleaned up and polished properly.
As with all my more recent horn projects, I’ll be posting more about this horn in my personal blog. If you want to follow this specific horn project, the posts start here.
