I love design and engineering, but I really love the stuff I grew up with from the 60's -80's. I've been cleaning and moving equipment and would love to post some of it before it gets put away again. Most of these things were found at garage sales and thrift stores over the last 15 years. Some of it was given to me by friends that knew I'd enjoy and take care of it. The Toshiba RT-VS3 is a nice mid-level player, it has a belt clip but it also has a screw hole on the adapter, that's kind of unique for securing it to a wall. The lamp is really cool, orange was huge in the early 70's and office desks would have a "statement" lamp. Banker's lamps with green shade were very common in the US but articulated lamps from Denmark were really cool and getting popular. This one is made in Japan and the build quality is pretty nice, the base is heavy and the articulated arm moves nicely, the lamp also rotates for pinpoint accuracy. It's smaller than most desk lamp but it's so nice looking. When done it folds back down into it's body, even today it looks great. I remember Tensor Lamps being popular as a kid, I think they had a beefy base with a very bright light, I imagine this is a copy of those popular lights.
I found this iloca 3D Camera at a local antique store, there was something about the cool looking dual lenses and dirt-cheap price that sealed the deal. These cameras would take a dual image that would look 3D if viewed with the right viewer. I'm a gadget guy and love intricate machinery and this fits perfectly. https://iloca.weebly.com/iloca-stereo-ii.html
Nice headphones, I'll have to dig into the stacks and pull some 70's models out. RUN-D.M.C. was the biggest rap band of the early 80's but it's still pretty hard to find their albums or cassettes, my record store guys says punk and rap don't stay on the shelves long, luckily this was on the shelf of my local Goodwill Thrift Store, I still paid $.99 cents for it. My little Shogun Poseidon Warrior that adorns a lot of my photos was imported by Mattel from Japan, the shoulder rocket launchers used to have rockets but they're long gone, this was also a thrift store find. In case anybody is wondering, the Onkyo A-7 Amp and T-7 Tuner were a score from the local record store. They had a non-working equipment area in the back that I'd get to check out once in a while. This set is huge, one of the biggest component sets of the late 70's. Most of the old equipment is built like a tank, after replacing the missing preamp jumpers I was back in business.
Sweet! My local hobby store never had this stuff, but we did have the Corgi's to check out in the big display case.
I've been doing some clean up and going through some of my boxes, I found these old tapes still boxed up. Discwasher packaging always looked the same and not to exciting but the orange TDK and BASF are really cool looking. The sealed BASF might be from 1971, there's a similar one on Ebay that with that description which might make it my oldest cassette. For those that don't know, the discwasher head cleaner worked by either squirting a couple drops of cleaner and playing it for a few seconds, or just running it dry. You would only run it in one direction and throw it out when done, the media was fabric based and would pick up dirt on the tape path.
Some more goodies from the boxes, maxell MD 74 Recordable MiniDisc in five exciting colors, notice these reference MP3 files, too bad they never really caught on over here. The Sony LNX Cassette Tape looks to be from the late 70's, the original price was $2.49 USD which would put it in competitive pricing back in those days. It was eventually clearanced out for $1.00 USD. Target is a nationwide department store over here that is still doing very well.
I'm a sucker for big old vintage walkie-talkies, as a kid there was something so cool about being able to talk with your buddy on the other side of the block. This MacDonald is big and heavy, it's not exotic but it's not low end either. MacDonald also had a few boomboxes in their line-up that show up from time-to-time.
HitClips, 2001 Tiger Electronics. They sold a lot of these but it must have been to the younger set. It was an interesting idea but it was limited to one minute of playback time. I get into these early 2000 memory storage units when everything was up in the air for the next generation of storage. Of course MP3s were coming on strong and digital audio was the future.
I think this is a mini-score unless it's a fake, my Tokyo Buddy was in town with his kid, we were heading to the Prince Museum and we had some time to kill at the local Goodwill. His kid is big into 80's-90's USA Clothing and was loading up for the trip back home. I was just doing the run-down and found this awesome Seiko Quartz Chronograph Watch Model 7A28-7039 for a few dollars. I can't tell if it's real or not, I've made that mistake before, I can tell the band isn't original. Surprisingly the front edge is in great shape, it must not have seen a lot of use.
