One of two copies of the oldest known recording of a black vocal group in the U.S. is up for auction.

The recording of the Unique Quartet from 1893 is so old that it pre-dates vinyl recordings. The song, “Mama’s Black Baby Boy,” was recorded on a wax-covered cylinder using technology invented by Thomas Edison. It can be played only on a cylinder player that was a predecessor to phonographs, which played flat, vinyl discs.

Troy Thibodeau from Saco River Auction Co. in Maine says it’s the oldest recorded African-American music in the U.S. The cylinder came from the collection of a Portland man. The only other copy resides in the Library of Congress.

Thibodeau says there are so few of these rare cylinders that it’s difficult to place a value on them. Also up for auction on Saturday is an 1896 recording of the Unique Quartet.

The 120-year-old recording, along with the second Unique Quartet song, “Who Broke the Lock (on the Henhouse Door)?” from 1896, came from a collection of 3,000 old cylinder recordings.

“They’re in fantastic shape,” Thibodeau said Wednesday, carefully showing off the smooth cylinder covered in brown wax on which the music resides in etched grooves. “All it takes is a little bit of heat or a little bit of cold, and these things are junk. So, for more than 100 years, someone really took care of these things and treasured them.”

Both cylinders are up for auction on Saturday, along with hundreds of other items, including a shirt belonging to George Custer, the cavalry captain who died in 1876 while fighting Indians at Little Bighorn in Montana.

Cylinder recordings are becoming rare, and recordings of black artists even more rare.

There are so few cylinders that have the historical significance of the Unique Quarter recordings that it’s hard to know how much they might sell for. An appraiser believes they’ll go for $25,000 or more — apiece.

The cylinders rotate on a machine that looks like an early Victrola-style player. A needle fits in the wax grooves as the cylinder spins. Such players still exist, but the wax degrades with each playing. Later phonographs featured flat platters and vinyl recordings that lasted far longer than wax.

Another black group, the Standard Quartet, is credited with making earlier cylinder recordings than the Unique Quartet, but none of those recordings exist today, said Bob Marovich, a gospel music historian in Chicago.

Marovich said he holds out hope that more of the old music could turn up. “Finding this one serves as a well of hope that maybe some more of them are out there,” he said in a telephone interview.

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