I agree Ron. It's called fishing and it's brought on by greed.

Oh, don't be such a cynic.


I've been around this hobby a long time and the
typical non collector out there is thinking that
they've got the holy grail of radios, "one only one there is",
a "prototype" and they just want some big gun collector
to come along and make them rich.

As an example, I got a phone call a while back from
a man that had a "prototype" tube tester. He said
he had talked to the folks at Southeby's about it and
they told him that if they had it in their auction the
starting bid would be 100K. He also said the Smithsonian
wanted to buy it, but they wanted to display it for a year
first. When I asked why he hadn't given it to Southeby's
and let them sale it, he explained that he was on full
disability and if he came into that much money the guvment
(that's the way he said it) would stop his checks.
I asked him to send me some photos of it so I could
get the opinion of some experts tube testers I knew.
When I got the photos they showed a dirty, rusty,
60's vintage counter top drug store tube tester.
When I email the photos to some of the "experts"
and asked they what they thought the value of it would be,
they typical answer was $25-$50, IF you could find someone
that wanted it. They didn't.
That's really a difference from 100K that Southeby's
said it was worth...
There wasn't any GREED at work there, was there?

Ron