Who is the Harmonicaguy ?

       My hobby is collecting harmonicas. I have been collecting them for over 20 years. You may have seen me at one of many antique shows searching for examples that I do not have. To date I have amassed over 4500 different harmonicas. As you can imagine, finding new harmonicas has become very difficult. I have been to virtually every major antique show in America as well as England and France. I've been to Brimfield, Atlantic City, Adamstown, Atlanta, Columbus, Ann Arbor, Indianapolis, Nashville, Portland, San Francisco, Newark England, and Paris France.

I wear the shirt you see in the picture, which helps me advertise to dealers what I am searching. I have purchased many harmonicas from dealers that did not have them out for sale, but had to dig it out of a storage box. This shirt makes it hard to bargain with dealers, but on the whole, it is very helpful.

E-bay has become a venue to find new harmonicas, and I keep an eye on it daily.

I have been to Germany several times to go to the major places of manufacture for harmonicas. Trossingen (Hohner, Koch, Weiss, Pohl, National) has a wonderful Museum, and you can spend several days just looking and reading about many of these makers. There is also a City Museum that has a few rooms of unusual harmonicas. Klingenthal-Zwota (Ludwig, Spranger, Rauner, Bohm, Seydel, Schunk) is in Saxony and has 2 museums, one is in Zwota, and is dedicated to harmonicas, and accordions. The Museum in Klingenthal has harmonicas and wintersports, but is very interesting. Check my reference book page for literature from these places as well as the link page for web information.

I hope to continue to search for harmonicas for a long time, as it is my favorite thing to do.