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Victor Type D

RARITY: ¤¤   VALUE:  ¤¤¤ 

The Victor D was introduced in 1903 as the premium model in Victor's product lineup.  It featured a large and elegantly-trimmed "gingerbread"  oak cabinet, Victor's newest and most powerful 3-spring motor, an Exhibition Soundbox, a full-size 12" turntable and the latest "Tapered Arm" tonearm system. A large black and brass horn was standard, but other horn configurations were offered at slight extra cost. It originally retailed for $55.00, which equates to approximately $1,850.00 in today's money. The example at left features the optional "Spearpoint" oak horn, which would have been the best combination that could have been purchased. The "D", with its large horn and premium components, was one of Victor's first phonographs that was designed for the serious music listener; it was no longer just a curiosity to provide brief distraction or to serve as a novelty item in the parlor.  The Victor D was redesigned in 1905, using a much plainer cabinet with square corner-posts, but retaining all the features of the earlier version. It was eventually renamed the Victor V to fall in-line with Victor's latest model nomenclature based on Roman Numerals.  By that time, the new $100.00 Victor VI had moved into the top-spot as Victor's best machine. Approximately 13,000 Victor D's were produced (based on serial numbers of surviving examples), but this is only an estimate, and may be significantly understated.
It is interesting to note that, while the vast predominance of surviving examples have serial numbers running between 100 and 1,000, a few spotty examples of phonographs denoted as "Victor D" have appeared with far higher serial numbers. It is possible that these machines were produced using left-over "D" cabinets which were assembled after the Victor V was already in production, and that they were then serialized in the same sequence as the Victor V's which were concurrently coming-off the assembly line. Or they may have been intended for export. To make matters more confusing, some machines tagged as "Victor V" continued to use the earlier cabinet style of the Victor D, indicating the factory was just churning-out these machines (and using-up available parts) without much regard for product continuity at a time when demand for phonographs was growing at a frenzied pace. In addition, the disastrous factory fire of 1904, which destroyed much of the factory inventory and record-keeping systems, certainly created a great deal of discontinuity in their production processes.
Accurate production information for many of the external-horn models is very spotty; there is not a good correlation between serial numbers and production dates for this model.  The best 'date estimator' that is currently viable is that any Victor D with the 'gingerbread' cabinet (left) would have been made between September 1903 and the Spring of 1905, and examples with square corner columns (the Victor V design) would have been produced after that time.

The current survival database shows the earliest existent Victor D to be S/N 159 and the latest to be S/N 13104.   See information above for serial numbers above this range.

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