Poster:Will There Be a Victrola in Your Home This Christmas?

The most likely response, of course, is: no. In 1915, when the Victrola XVIII was first introduced, its retail price ran as high as a $350 dollars, topping the yearly earnings of an average public school teacher and equating to about one-third of the average middle-class family income. Still, executives at the Victor Talking Machine Company took great pleasure in the gradual increase in sales of their more expensive models following the introduction of the first Victrola in 1906. In 1915 they improved the quality and raised the price of the Victrola by more than $100. Even trolley ads like this one, however - targeted for millions of riders during the Christmas shopping season - could not help consumers overcome the sticker shock. Sales plummeted, and, after the 1916 Christmas season, the Victor Company quietly replaced the Victrola XVIII with the less-expensive Victrola XVII. That does not mean, however, that the Victrola was doomed. Phonographs had taken the country by storm since their introduction in 1901, and Victrola set the industry standard. In 1914 Americans were buying more than 500,000 phonographs annually, and yearly production exceeded 100 million by 1921.