Hello my name is Tom and im from The Netherlands, I have much experience with restoring walkmans and I have a beautiful collection that I all restored myself. To name a few models: dd9 dd100 dd dd2 dd3 dd33 dd30 d3 d6c EX808HG EX1HG and many more Also I restore and collect Philips DCC players for example: DCC-175 DCC-170 DCC-130 DCC-951 Greets Tom
Hi Tom and welcome I am from Luxembourg and also new to the forum like you! Please post some pictures of your nice collection.
Welcome and awesome collection! Please start a thread on the DCC's, we never saw many of them over here, someday I'd love to check one out.
Welcome to Stereo2Go! And holy moly, that's a collection with some impressive models! How did you get a hold of the Guys & Dolls edition of the TPS-L2? I heard those are supposedly extremely rare and expensive and yours looks like it's in excellent or even mint-condition. I also see you got a stack of 3.5" floppy disks. How much storage space do yours have? 1.44MB or are those the more expensive ones with more? I actually found fresh, unused packs in a hidden shelf of an electronics shop about close to a year ago, close to 10 bucks for a pack of 10 disks by the brand Lynq. Was quite surreal. Grabbed them for nostalgia's sake without thinking twice, but still trying to figure out an interesting way to use them that's not just "I'll copy a text file onto it" and some other idea I had.
I didn't notice the disks before, are they collectible now? I think I have a bunch still in storage somewhere. I believe Imation (3M) had a mega-drive that extended storage on these, I live kind of close to the old world headquarters, I always wanted one of those drives but hard-drive prices kept falling and the Zip-Drives had more capacity.
They floppy disks are not collectable, but this dcc175 is a very special player only released in the Netherlands. There can be plugged in a special cable in the player to a computer. Then you can add text to a self recorded tape. There are only made 1200 of those cables, they floppys in the box are the files to install the software. https://www.dutchaudioclassics.nl/philips_dcc175_multimedia_portable_dcc_recorder/ https://dccmuseum.com/
Honestly I have no idea if they are collectibles these days, I suppose not, just like Tom said, I just found it funny I could still purchase some in times like these where they are deprecated tech and likely unused and grabbed them. Still got a stack of old ones somewhere. Though to be fair, the pack I got looks slightly old, the colour mildly bleached, so maybe they just found some remaining ones in storage and put them up for sale just hoping to get rid of them without throwing them into trash... unlike certain other stores that simply threw away their entire collection of virgin tapes when they restructured instead of either giving them away or putting their price down... Genius... I'm getting the feeling Japan got everything and is like a go-to location for rarities, especially after seeing Mister X's thread of his tour through that country. So much niché stuff!
Simple floppy disks are not rare, there was a very high production of these so they won't become collectable. Something will become collectable when there where not that much items produced. Last month I got my hands on a boodoo khan BBS-10 amplifier on Ebay. Its sad that I only got the amplifier and not the full body system, I hope that I can get my hands on the rest of the items someday. But I think the chance is very low, there where only 300 of these sets made. But I have hope . Today I bought an other Sony WM-EX808 in a wooden box on a local dutch site called marktplaats.nl, here you can buy al sort of second hands stuff. I almost bought all my walkmans here, people clean up there homes and sell old walkmans here. When you reply fast you can get a beautiful Sony from the dd series under $100. There are also many non collectable walkmans for sale, but when you look frequent enough en reply fast there are good deals to be made. Unfortunately people that sell on Marktplaats will not ship outside the country, people are not used to this and will get suspicious. Also international shipping is for many of them too much work in my opinion. I also sell walkmans on Ebay, from the profit I finance my own collection. In this way my hobby pays itself haha. Some people claim that EX1HG and EX808HG in wooden boxes where only released in Japan or China, but i think it was for Sony dealers (shops). I bought one from a former shop owner and he told me that is was for promotion purposes. Like the boodo khan body system that was for the biggest dealers in the world to promote the DOL extended bass and high frequency boost. Off-course there where made much more wooden box versions then 300, I think this was for all dealers and not only the big one's.
Walkgirl, who still checks in once in a while, used to post a ton of really cool units, I think she lived in your part of the world. She pretty much got all of us into microcassette players when they were still ultra-rare. John Edwards (RIP) had the full Boodo Khan System and posted a lot of information about it years ago. The guy had some crazy-informative threads and was also finding cutting-edge rare pieces, if you have some spare time look up these member's old threads in the "forum reader." The best way to search it is through google, ie... ""John Edwards" site:stereo2go.com/forum reader" I should have known the discs were software for the player......
