Are these Steve's?

No........

Oh yeah. You mean why is the return address Avedis Zildjian when the companies were supposedly completely separate in the 1950's.

First, is there a a postage or some other sort of carrier stamp on the box that indicates when it was actually shipped?

I assume that the Avedis Zildjian company had a bunch of Istanbul K's on hand from various periods to access the "competition" and perhaps also used as an aid when voicing their own cymbals.

Do you know what year Zildjian moved from Quincy to Norwell? Perhaps they were culling their inventory when they moved and got rid of some of the K's they had acquired over the years,

Finally, If they were still in Quincy when they took ownership of K Zildjian, these cymbals could have been acquired by them at that time.

The time line of their move to Norwell and/or the actual date the box was shipped would be key to resolving this question... unless you already know the answer!

You're close. The only problem with your premise is that the Kerope and Avedis Zildjian were completely separate from the very beginning. That would be from 1929 on. They only became one and the same in about 1982.

But in fact you right on the when you said:

I'm very surprised that this didn't ring anybody's alarm bells the first time around.

I knew that, although I thought they took it over by around 1979.

I asked when the box was shipped from A Ziljian because it could have been sent in the '80s. Just because the cymbals were created in the 50's, doesn't necessarily mean they were boxed up and sent in the 50's does it?

The fact that they were factory wrapped only refers to the contents, not the box itself. Is that correct? I had suggested it could have been shipped much later, perhaps after the merger when Zildjian acquired all the K Zildjian inventory. This assumes A. Zildjian was still in Quincy in 1982. However, my albeit faulty memory tells me they were in Norwell by then.

"I'm very surprised that this didn't ring anybody's alarm bells the first time around."

I saw this "boxed set" when you first posted it some time ago, At the time, I focused on the cymbals themselves not the box. I think if I had the box in front of me, it would have caused me to shout out "huh?".

So...whats the answer :confused:

No it doesn't. But Quincy was closed around 1967, that's all we can say for sure.

Actually Avedis Zildjian never did acquire the K. Zildjian inventory, just the trademark rights.

The answer is that they did make a practice of buying their competitor's cymbals in order to study them.

Interesting. They must have had some inventory at the end, as well as a number of cymbals they kept from various production runs over the decades. I wonder what became of them. Did they all end up at the Gretsch factory in Brooklyn?

No, they ended up with a certain collector/player. Not me. I can't mention his name but he bought the entire inventory in 1977 and he has hundreds of them.

It would be great to see some more of them from time to time if possible. Thanks for sharing those!

It would bee nice if this individual put some up for sale, and if he bought them in '79 he may be getting a bit old so perhaps this will come to pass in the not too distant future. If he really has such a large collection though, he would have to auction them only a few at a time. Could you imagine what would happen to the price of Old Ks if he put 75 or 100 up for auction in a period of a few weeks with more to come? The prices would stay stable at first but would quickly start to drop.

I would guess if he had a few hundred cymbals and auctioned them off over a 6 month period, the price would probably fall to less then 50% of what they average now. Of course, once they were all sold, prices would start to rise again. Does this individual actually play any of them?