Poor Sears, they had it all, basically the template for Amazon but for some reason they never took it to the next level. This is my first Sears Branded Box and it's small but it still fits all the criteria for a boombox. This is Sears Model Number 560.21080250, the first numbers 560 indicate the manufacturer, unfortunately it doesn't show up on the databases. This would have been a great little desktop unit to listen to the radio or tape for a long night of studying. This is the only Sears Box I have but ever since we determined that Marantz made at least one of their models, I've been paying a little more attention.
Yes I read about Sears. Hopefully, they can rescue some of it. We have had our fair share of retail bankruptcies here in the UK. The top of the range Sony boombox which Nick bought and then resold recently had a House of Fraser price label on the box. They recently went bankrupt. They did actually get rescued by Mike Ashley who made his fortune selling cheap sportswear. I suppose we should give him the benefit of the doubt, before commenting. It would be interesting to know how much of Amazons profits come from pure retail (buy in goods and then sell them) and how much from their other services, the obvious one being Amazon Prime (which I have twice accidentally got signed up to trying to edit order details on Amazon ). It you think back to when this little radio cassette was made retail was very simple, with people buying items like this and the tapes to go in it. Nowadays I think the majority of consumers money is being spent on Mobile Phone Contracts, Satellite TV contracts etc etc and they expect the equipment to be given to them for free; says the person inputing this through his £30 a month BT Infinity Fibre Internet. If they said they wanted £540 up front that would seem very expensive, but £30 a month on an 18 month contract sounds O.K. Anyway in practice the actual hardware provided is probably less then £100 while the costs and the profit are in providing the service, and paying silly money for football (soccer) broadcast rights that I have no interest in whatsoever.
I love these little gems!! I remember Currys here in the UK had a very similar unit like that, styling very much the same & in black or silver! Just beautiful examples of what you could buy in 1982! I must confess I miss those times, so exciting for a young man that I was then!! Oh......& No Football for me either!! I don't get it, never have never will & would rather watch the test card
I think the attraction was that when you went in Currys / Dixons / Laskys / Comet / House of Fraser .......... etc you usually would find some exiting new gadget that you would love to buy. I actually bought two expensive gadgets in House of Fraser; 25" Toshiba CRT TV for £440 - superb sound system in that but no Nicam, which had only just been launched and added £100 to the price. Philips DVD player for £140. That was ex display. We wanted a black one to match the VCR and all the cheaper (around £100) ones in the supermarkets were silver. Does anyone know what the profit margin on consumer electronics was in the 1980s / 1990s? Even if they were only making 10% margin that was £58 profit House of Fraser made from me. More than I have spent there in total this decade. I went in there a couple of months ago and there was nothing I couldn't have bought cheaper in TK Maxx next door.
Longman, did you ever check out the watches back then? All the gadget watches coming out, new models all the time, Casio had a big share of the market flooding it with all these neat different versions. If it was similar today you'd see 100 different Apple Phones coming out every year. I wonder if they did tiny upgrades on electronics to make up for the low margins, nobody wanted the old version so they had to upgrade every couple years.
Absolutely. My first digital watch was the Casio F100 as featured in Blade Runner. My friend at college bought the Casio Space Invader watch as soon as he saw the advert. In fact I am waiting for delivery of one of these that I just won on ebay. I recently looked at new watches and most now seem to be closer to a pocket alarm clock with a strap fitted. The other thing was Casio calculators. I spent over a weeks wages on a Casio FX8000 which at the time was the only LCD calculator that would do fractions. Later when we were doing integration in maths I saw an advert for the FX180P which could do integration I went out at lunchtime and bought one. These were all in the late 1970s, early 1980s before I had any kind of computer at home. Casio's next big trick was making music keyboards that were relatively affordable, and consequently seemed to appear in every electronics store. Before then electronic keyboards were the sort of thing a professional musician would take out a bank loan to buy. Panasonic/Technics and JVC quickly followed them into this new market. In 1983 when I finished college I bought an Casio MT65 for £150. The last new keyboard I bought was from Tempo, a short lived electrical chain trying to compete with Comet. Ironically I now work about five minutes walk from what was one of their warehouses, which is now a place selling designer kitchens and bathrooms.
My Little Gem & Absolute Minter From Those Days!! Love this little thing & looked at it in the Sunday magazine that accompanied the paper back in 1980!! Never thought I would stumble upon a pristine example in 2015!!
