Really too bad about the condition though.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Accordion-Red-Sammy-/121236867794From the engraving details, the celluloid, the keyboard edges, the bass grille, and some other features I speculate that this accordion might date from the late 1920s.
It has a lot of features that overlap with the Likely, Cunningham, and Sullivan Baldoni-Bartoli Irish-American 1-row boxes, and with Ray's unlabeled McAleer 1-row box. See for example this thread and those referenced there:
http://forum.melodeon.net/index.php/topic,11144Just to pick out two details of the engraving, the shape of the "B" letters in the Baldoni-Bartoli name are similar to those on the earliest Irish-American boxes known, and the "constellations" of rhinestones near the flags are reminiscent (though not identical) to those on the Likely and Sullivan boxes.
This "Sammy" piano box doesn't seem to have even the very thin line or dot between the names Baldoni and Bartoli that's found in the earliest Irish-American boxes labeled with those names -- but maybe there's a mark that doesn't show up in the photos. The flags and vines were doubtless designed and executed by the same engraver who did the Sullivan and Likely box.
I have a wrecked Baldoni-Bartoli PA very similar to this one in many details, but with tortoiseshell celluloid, brick-red trim strips, and the "topless angel" decorations often found on Italian piano-boxes from this period. Like the "Sammy" box, that one lost its grille over the years which makes me suspect that both were fancy metal ones, re-appropriated at some point.
This is likely a rusty, mildewy, delaminating castaway that no sane spouse would allow in the door . . . but if I lived nearby I would go rescue it to document its details and save what I could.
Great to have seen it anyway. . .
Paul Groff
