On Fri, 22 Jan 2016, gareth wrote:

It is my regret that I have very little in the way of valve (tube for the
Yanks)
equipment, despite having had the seeds of interest sown 54 years ago at age
11.

It saddens me when I think of the valved RXs that I once had and then let
go, R210, R1475, HRO,
R1155, RA17 and for TX, KW Vanguard, FT101E (twice), Codar AT5, Sommerkamp
747.

But in the seventies, at least around here, nobody wanted that stuff. I
remember getting some at a radio club auction, or just given to me, I'd
play with it a bit, then trade it off for something that at the time
seemed more interesting. Most of it wasn't in great shape, but that PMR-8
mobile receiver was. I should have kept that.

Nobody wanted it because it was tubes, and it was AM. So this was "junk".
SO it was easy to get.

Then later, attrition worked it's ways, and people had regret for getting
rid of the stuff, or wanted the stuff they lusted after when younger, and
it became valuable. Since there was less of it, the price went up, too,
to meet demand.

Same thing happened with antique radios. Virtually nobody was collecting
them in the sixties or early seventies, then slowly it became a hobby in
itself. I'm talking about broadcast radios. Home computers too, though
I'm not sure we've really hit the prime point for that. There too, at one
point it was easy to get ahold of "junk" computers, too simple to be
useful, but nobody much yet having the foresight to start collecting.

Michael


Still, tomorrow I hope to go a little way to correcting the bias by picking
up an FT200
and an Eddystone 640!

I do havve sitting on the shelf a Trio 830s, though, although hidden behind
thepile of QRP rigs.

Michael Black wrote:
But in the seventies, at least around here, nobody wanted that stuff. I
remember getting some at a radio club auction, or just given to me, I'd
play with it a bit, then trade it off for something that at the time
seemed more interesting. Most of it wasn't in great shape, but that
PMR-8 mobile receiver was. I should have kept that.

Nobody wanted it because it was tubes, and it was AM. So this was "junk".
SO it was easy to get.

Then later, attrition worked it's ways, and people had regret for getting
rid of the stuff, or wanted the stuff they lusted after when younger, and
it became valuable. Since there was less of it, the price went up, too, to meet demand.

Same thing happened with antique radios. Virtually nobody was collecting
them in the sixties or early seventies, then slowly it became a hobby in
itself. I'm talking about broadcast radios. Home computers too, though
I'm not sure we've really hit the prime point for that. There too, at
one point it was easy to get ahold of "junk" computers, too simple to be
useful, but nobody much yet having the foresight to start collecting.


We've definitely not seen peak market for vintage computers. Amiga
equipment has been rising in value for the last decade, with demand
snowballing. Likewise vintage Apple equipment, although that's less
"fevered" than the Amiga collecting market, but stuff perceived as
"desirable" is achieving sillier and sillier prices. Console collecting has
gone crazy, too.

--
STC // M0TEY // twitter.com/ukradioamateur