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July 8th 04, 10:35 PM

"No Spam " No wrote in message news:ifgU75G3LLdo-pn2-kckfOe99Ln2x@localhost...
On Thu, 8 Jul 2004 04:07:27 UTC, (Michael
Black) wrote:

And that's exactly what Jim was talking about.

Yep.

Right at that point, the old tube rigs were pretty much seen as junk,
so people like us coming into the hobby could get them at great prices.
I brought home various rigs from the local ham auction and even people's
junk piles, played with them and then traded them off.

Same here.

It was very cheap to get into the hobby that way at that point. You would
see it all the time in the photos in the ham magazines, young people with
older rigs and they had neat stuff.

But at the time, it wasn't always seen as neat stuff.

It's only with the passage of time that the stuff became valuable, and
not to get newcomers on the air, but because people as they aged regretted
getting rid of their old stuff, when they were no longer using it.

Michael VE2BVW

Somehow, I missed that. About 1962(?) I bought an SX-101A, it was
$200., a year later, 1963 I paid "about" that for a working HT-37.

That was before the above effects were happening.

In the early 1970's, an SB-101 was about $200 but it wasn't working.
It took me years to build up to opening the LMO an fix the frequency
jump problem.

The SB family was still being made then. And all the gear you name is
SSB capable.

About 1970, the HW-32/HP-23 was about $150 to buy and sell. It
was dead when I got it and working OK but off frequency when I sold
it a year or two later. I'd guess this combo is a little less than
that today.

Between 1970 and 2002, I didn't do much radio shopping except for
the ICOM IC-720A in the early 1980's. $2,000 including the optional
filters and power supply.

For a Rip Van Winkle, Active shopper between 1960 and 1970, active
on the air between "about" 1962 and 1970. Briefly active about
1980, and again after 2001/2002, it seems that prices did not change
that much.

The biggest differences a

1) The U.S. manufacturers suddenly vanished. It doesn't seem
gradual to me. One day they were there, the next, they're all
gone. There's a thin layer of iridium in the strata marking the
dieoff.

It seemed gradual to me. EFJ and H/H were the first to go. National
hung on a bit longer, Drake even longer and Collins well into the
1980s with the KWM-380.

2) Boatanchor prices are consistant but not in constant dollars.
$200 was a LOT of money to a 15, 16 year old but it bought amazing
technology and quality.

$200 today is still a lot of money, it buys a 20 inch color TV set,
VCR, DVD player, AND an external speaker system. It also buys a
nice boatanchor.

Agree 100%. The only way to really compare is to figure out how many
hours of typical teeenage-job work were needed to earn the rig.

For example, a DX-60 kit was $79.95 when I was a Novice. You also had
to pay to ship it. Minimum wage back then might yield you $1 an hour
after taxes, and many kids got less than that by doing jobs like
mowing lawns and shoveling snow.

So that DX-60 cost 80-100 hours of work, and you still needed
crystals, a receiver w/ accessories, key/mike, antenna and a TR
system.

Today, one can expect to take home $5 an hour or so for those jobs. So
80-100 hours work translates to $400-500.

73 de Jim, N2EY