Sometimes I find some oddball units in old catalogs that look like they might be a neat conversation piece, the Toshiba KT-1980 is one of them. I'm not sure if this was only sold in Japan but I recently purchased one to see if it was as cool as it looked. While this is more of a dictation recorder, it's a little different then most with it's FM broadcasting ability, yep it can broadcast either your mic input or the cassette playing. When I saw it I immediately thought of the JVC MR-200, which is nearly the same size but I was more intrigued by the FM broadcasting which I've only seen on the Marantz PC Series Players. I know there's at least one Sony Dictation Recorder with FM broadcasting, also very rare and it goes for silly money when it's for sale I'm not disappointed, all metal construction, nice small square buttons that look high end and gun-metal blue trim that has an awesome shine when it's sitting on the table. This is a heavy unit and while the button labels are English, the data plate is in Japanese. I've paired it with my AIWA CM-23 microphone, another beautiful piece of 70's Japanese Engineering, I could see this easily sitting on some boardroom table.
A sales page from 1981, this was a staggering 36,800 yen, that's like $370.00 USD. The microcassette version was the KT-M20, interestingly it's much less expensive without the FM broadcasting.
