I was in a small town with a big antique store, some of the audio I found, nothing too exciting including this Sony Boombox. These stores rent out floor space so there might be 100+ different sellers and a wide range of vintage products. This might have been a keeper but not a few dollars like it would have been a few years ago Kind of neat looking 70's Sony Radio I did like this Samsung but it was way over my budget and didn't have a tape deck. It's nice seeing these portables showing up more Some mid-level equipment, 20 years ago this would have been $100 USD for all, now it's twice that for one unit.
I saw these two at a garage sale today, bought a couple albums but no boomers. $20 USD each should I have splurged?
I was over at our local vintage audio thrift store Twin Cities Smitty and spied this new arrival, never seen a Rek O Kut in person, big and beefy although the platter doesn't seem to have much heft. The wooden tone-arm is interesting. Below is a nice Fisher FM Tube Tuner and a MATHS? Tube Amp, I can't read the name or find MATHS, anybody know what it is?
The local Flight Refuelling Hamfest has came around again on Sunday. I was on site at 7:00 in order to help set up Christchurch Amateur Radio Societies stand. By 8:30 I had time to have a look around. While I thought attendance was down especially amongst retail sellers the amount of audio gear was up. The most interesting boombox I spotted was this huge Grundig although the speakers were very small compared with the size of the unit. At the start the asking price was £40. I later spotted that the guy I bought some cassettes from had bought it. This was the next seller in the car boot section. That is a late 1970s Hitachi hidden at the back behind the two woodgrain radios on the left. The oldest audio gear there was from the 1920s. Strange to thing that boomboxes are now approaching half that age. Some of the vehicles there were as old as the audio gear. The Royal Signals Museum isn't too far away from the site so a few people have connections to that. When I saw this I thought of @TooCooL4 What did I buy? I was trying to avoid anything big but found some good small stuff. The MiniDisc Recorder is a Sony MZ-R37. I now need to find the couple of recorded MiniDiscs I own, or try making a recording to test it. The Canon camcorder works. The JVC I bought new twenty years ago and a more recently aquired spare have both developed problems despite very little use. Something that escaped getting a photo was a large Roberts boombox like this https://www.londonprophire.com/Props-1/93/Radios/Brown-Retro-Roberts-Boombox-P2878.html by the time I had time to take photos it must have been sold. Almost certainly a Sangean as they make all the plastic cased Roberts radios.
Longman: That sounded a fun outing and some good pictures. I wonder how many of those old radios actually got sold that day? I agree on the Grundig, small speakers, won't sound that good, it was more about the radio reception and being able to record what one hears, I think, behind the design. Mr. X: Good to read you resisted the urge to buy any of those junker clunkers. Antique stores and their prices... once again I shudder and sigh in relief that we have the mighty e-bay to save us all from such stores and their depressingly limited and small selection of junk.
Dayton Hamvention https://hamvention.org/ has the reputation of being the best in the world. I have never been to a Radio Rally outside of the U.K. so don't know how they compare. Maybe it is more Radio Ham orientated i.e. $2000 transceivers. Flight Refuelling Hamfest has certainly changed over the years. In the 1990s before eBay took off they used to have a couple of marquees selling catalogue returns. I remember that the year after Argos (a large U.K. catalogue retailer) started selling Sony Walkmans there were literally buckets full of faulty ones being sold for around £5 each. Again in the 1990s, after it had flopped I bought a brand new Philips CDI player complete with the video cartridge for about 1/10th of the original price. At a guess around 1/3rd, although I suspect that many were passing from people in their 70s to people like myself in their 60s. I did buy a Philips D2935 https://www.radiomuseum.co.uk/philips.html in poor cosmetic condition. If it works when I test it I will spend more than I did on the radio on a reproduction replacement front panel, as that has disintegrated which is a very common problem on them. Back to peoples ages, something I noticed is that people no longer sneer at the Boomboxes in the way they used to in the 20th century. I guess even 70 year olds were only in their 20s when they came out so liked them both then and now.
Stuff is still out there, here's a curb find from this winter! She's actually in great shape, maybe used in a dusty garage? Someday I'll clean it up but the radio works fine.
You have the same water/stain marks! Is that AUX in on the top? Mines out back so I can't look at it. I might bring it in, my CFS-9000 Daily Driver is ready to be cycled out but I need AUX in for the bluetooth receiver.
