That was a good receiver, but the rarest one I've seen was the Collins
451S-1. Basically, it was the receive section of a KWM-380, except that it
used an SRA-3H mixer, instead of the SRA-1H mixer that the '380 used. Thise
brought the low end down to about 40kHz. It was advertised in an older
edition of WRTH, but it never got past the engineering prototype stage; this
was about when Collins decided to pull out of the amateur market. There were
only about 5 or 6 of them made, and the only two that I had seen belonged to
Collins employees; as a matter of fact, one of the fellows just has it
idling along on the 20 Meter band all day, just to look good. There was one
other Collins receiver that never made it big; this was the S-1. It was a
solid state, general coverage receiver that would tune either by using
rotary switches, or it could also be computer controlled. I am not sure how
many of these were made. There was one other cool receiver that I remember;
this was the 851S-1. It was an HF8050 receiver, but with an optical encoder
for tuning, and an LCD for the frequency readout, vs. the thumbwheel
switches and the LED readout. The 8050 is a very good receiver, capable of
withstanding 100V of RF at the antenna input, whether the receiver is
powered on of off. Last time I checked, Murphy's Surplus was selling this
receiver for around 3500. Lots of fun stuff out there!

Pete

Clay Nicolsen wrote in message
...
So you drop the bomb in your last sentence: "My SX88 sits, not plugged
in.
Looks a lot better than the one on eBay but NOT for sale.. "

You're right, there are plenty of better performing receivers for much
less
money. I've got a Kenwood R-5000 that I will keep forever, and a mint
Hammarlund HQ-180C, and I'll put the pair up against just about anything.
As a matter of fact, my FRG-7 that I bought brand new in the '70's is
without question still, imho, for the money, the best value
triple-conversion receiver ever made. And great audio, too.

The only folks who'll pay what the 88 will bring are diehard Halli guys
who
want it for their "centerpiece". I've been watching this one (no, it's
WAY
out of my league!) and it passed the reserve at around $3,500 or so. Not
sure I'll buy this, though: "Other receivers just as rare..." I'm not an
experienced Halli collector, but I've read in more than one article that
as
few as 60 may have been sold. You'd have to get into some very
sophisticated military gear or practically one-off receivers to get close
to
that rarified number. Even if the 60 number is wrong, and no one knows
for
sure, the actual number can't be much more than the low hundreds.

Oh, well, it's still fun to watch! Gotta be less insane, even at $5,000+,
than that catalin that fetched $27,000 two weeks ago!!

Clay