Carnoustie record collector Shane Quentin stumbled upon a slice of Old Firm history after spending £6 at an Auchtermuchty auction.
It is an original one-sided 78rpm that features comedian Jock Whiteford describing the action from a Rangers versus Celtic match at Hampden in 1907.
Shane said it could be the oldest recording of a football game in the UK.
“I won it for £6 in a box of old 78s and 7-inch singles at the auction,” he said.
“I was actually bidding for the singles but do have quite an eclectic collection of 78s too, so when I went through the lot of old shellac discs the football one caught my eye.
“The earliest 78 that I have before I found this one is ‘the sound of a captive nightingale’, which was released in 1910 on HMV.
“The recording features a Scottish comedian describing the match as it happens alongside crowd roars, although the sound quality is poor.
“The recording states on the rear of the disc that it was ‘re-produced in Germany’, which is mighty bizarre for an English pressing – of a Scottish football match!”
It predates any radio coverage from the time but Shane has now sent the recording to a friend who is going to try to clean it up to improve the audio.
“I am 59 now and moved to Scotland a year or so ago and have been married to my Scottish wife for nearly 20 years,” he said.
“As far as the value of the football 78 goes, I do know a copy sold a few years back for over £50 but try finding another!
“It’s an incredibly early recording, of course, and this was actually before radio commentary on matches began.
“It was even before the radio industry was started in 1913.”
Shane, who moved to Tayside from Northampton in 2020, said his record collecting is “more a way of life than a side project”.
Around 10 years ago vinyl records became popular again and sales have been surging in recent years with mere nostalgia also playing a part in its popularity.
Shane’s interest in record collecting really came about in the early ’70s, when his father opened a second hand store called Sellit & Soon.
Weird sleeves
Shane’s most prized records include the first Velvet Underground album (the issue before the most well known, ‘banana sleeve’ copy), an original Safe As Milk by Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, and a first pressing of David Bowie’s Hunky Dory.
“I really can blame my parents as far as getting the record collecting bug goes; well, my dad, to be honest,” he said.
“It was his Little Richard, Big Bopper and David Bowie singles that opened my ears and heart to vinyl delights from when I was about 10 years old.
“He opened a second hand shop in Milton Keynes in 1972, which was in the early years of the new city of MK, and with the growth of it he expanded the business, which sold not only furniture and clothes but also records, lots of lovely records.
“I would be about 13 when he would pay me to work weekends in one of the shops and would pay me in vinyl, consequently setting off a lifelong habit of picking sleeves out of interest either for the artist whose name I may have recognised but, more often than not, for the artwork, and the ’70s certainly threw up a lot of weird sleeves.
“From labels like Vertigo and Brain, often featuring freaky and spaced out prog and electronica, to the strange spoken word albums which turned up in the second hand racks from folk clearing out their collections in exchange for a wardrobe as they moved into the new city.
“By the time the ’80s arrived I took a decision which seemed like a good idea at the time and got rid of all my records and personal possessions and spent years travelling overseas.
Nearly 50 years of collecting and I have still not worked out a system of keeping them in any order.”
Shane Quentin
“However, after returning with a great tan and a dubious moustache I landed home at the time when the car boots were just starting up.
“Old habits die hard, of course, and my collecting bug struck again and this time I kept what I considered the more unusual records and expanded this into picking up the discs no-one seemed to be interested in, like 7-inch flexi-discs.
“I now have what is probably the largest collection of these floppy freebies in the country.
“A couple of years ago a popular book was published which featured many of these unusual treasures, which proved there was still an interest in such esoterica.
“But when it comes to knowing how many records there actually are in my collection I always say it’s quality, not quantity, which is a bit cheeky but I have honestly never counted and, of course, they are not in any specific order.
“Nearly 50 years of collecting and I have still not worked out a system of keeping them in any order.”
As we approach 2022, Shane’s habit shows no sign of letting up: “Value-wise, I have rare albums by The Velvet Underground and David Bowie and early punk singles but 90% of the vinyl I have collected over the years has been second hand.
“Perhaps I just have a good eye for a bargain.”
