German and French company sleeves · Odeon

Odeon: two German designs and a French Odéon sleeve

Three Odeon sleeves: German sleeves with lettering arranged in a cross and with twin oval temple logos, and a French Odéon sleeve with a lighthouse.

Dating at a glance

Printed: Cross lettering: c. 1936 – 1939
Twin ovals: c. 1929 – mid-1930s
French lighthouse: probably early 1930s
In use: Late 1920s to the end of the 1930s
Confidence: Low to medium for each. The German dates come from collectors’ forum reports, not from dated documents
Basis: Collectors’ observations of which records came in which design

The sleeve

Lettering in a cross (German)

Tan paper printed flat in dark blue: ODEON in tall capitals made of stripes, set once across and once down, with the Odeon temple trade mark in an oval and Odeon in script at the lower right. There is no airbrushed shading.

Twin oval temple logos (German)

Tan paper printed in blue: ODEON arched above and below the hole, with the temple trade mark in a dotted oval on either side.

Lighthouse (French)

Tan paper printed in brown and gold: a stepped lighthouse tower rising from the hole, with ODÉON in curved letters around it. The accented É marks it as French. The name Michel is handwritten on it.

Simon reports that each of the three is the same on both sides, and that all three came from his box of German records.

Tan Odeon sleeve printed in dark blue with tall striped ODEON lettering in a cross and the temple trade mark in an oval. — Lettering in a cross. Select the image for a larger view.

Tan Odeon sleeve printed in blue with ODEON above and below the hole and a temple trade mark in a dotted oval either side. — Twin oval temple logos.

Tan Odéon sleeve printed in brown and gold with a stepped lighthouse tower rising from the hole and ODÉON in curved letters. — French lighthouse sleeve, with the handwritten name Michel.

The evidence

ObservedCross lettering. On the grammophon-platten.de forum, collectors report the airbrushed version of this lettered cross with Odeon records from about 1934, and the flat version without airbrush, like Simon’s, from about June 1936. Another collector’s photograph of the flat version is labelled 1939. A slimmer redrawn version was used after the war; Simon’s has the fuller pre-war lettering.
InferredSo the cross-lettering sleeve is probably from about 1936–1939, perhaps used into the early war years.
ObservedTwin ovals. The same forum describes a very common sleeve with only Odeon lettering and logos going with earlier records, up to about 1934. Phonopassion lists twin-oval types (Odeon_2, Odeon_3) at the start of its German Odeon sequence. We take this to be Simon’s design, but the forum description is not specific enough to be sure.
ObservedThe French lighthouse. Phonopassion lists the lighthouse among its French Odéon types (Odeon_20–22), including a brown version (Odeon_22). Encyclopédisque photographs a blue lighthouse sleeve marked “Disque à aiguille” with Odéon 250 384 (1931). Our notes record the blue version with records of 1931–33. Simon’s brown version does not carry the “Disque à aiguille” wording.
InferredSo the French sleeve is probably from the early 1930s. We have not seen the brown version itself with a dated record.

Sources

Grammophon-Platten forum, “Hüllen O-P: Odeon” (German): https://grammophon-platten.de/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?289.0
Phonopassion sleeve type Odeon_2 (image): https://phonopassion.de/images/cover/odeon_2.jpg
Phonopassion sleeve type Odeon_22, France (image): https://phonopassion.de/images/cover/odeon_22.jpg
Encyclopédisque, Odéon 250 384 (1931) in the blue lighthouse sleeve: https://www.encyclopedisque.fr/disque/64911.html
Our French company sleeves notes: french-company-sleeves.html

What we could not find

A dated example of each of the three sleeves.
Whether the twin-oval design is the one the forum describes.
When the brown lighthouse version was printed relative to the blue one.

Researched 12 November 2026 from Simon’s photographs of that evening.