I just received the Degen DE105 from an eBay dealer. I was prepared for
the Chinese manual; and actually figured out everything easily enough. I
was a bit put off by the labels, though; as the photo in the ad (as on the
front of the box) shows the controls with English labels, but the actual
radio is entirely labelled in Chinese.

The initial displeasure aside; this is a terrific bargain for the $25 -
$30 that these things usually go for on eBay. As I read the description of
the little plastic tag being used as an ersatz stand, I was instantly
reminded that Sony did the same thing on their (at the time) revolutionary
ICF-SW1 portable.

The more I use the 105, the more I am convinced they used the basic design
features of the IFC-SW1 and shoehorned the usual Chinese shortwave radio
technology (right down to the weird arrangement of numbers on the keypad
and the two-size numeric display). So there it is, folks. This is a
single-conversion, Chinese knock-off of 1980's Sony technology, at a tiny
fraction of the original price.

This is definitely going on my next trip ... time to buy another as a
spare :-)