A few times in the past I have looked for a Comet price list on Ebay. I will have an update on that soon. In the U.K. Comet pioneered the idea of the out of town discount warehouse, adopting this format when long time rival Curry's only had high street stores. You can read about them here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Group I didn't realise that someone has recently resurrected the name. I actually bought quite a few things in Comet, from my first CB rig in 1981 to the Computer Monitor I am using today. It was a surprise to find that the Decemeber 1983 HiFi news magazine I bought recently included a thirty page Comet advert for their HiFi range. Unfortunately, like the rest of the magazine it covers noting but HiFi. The only portables mentioned in the magazine was one retailer saying to phone them to find out about their range and the free Walkman DD being offered by Comet when you bought a Sony Compact Disc player. I suspect the free DD was because Sony U.K. were quite reluctant to supply discount retailers and probably would have stopped supplying Comet had they advertised the CDP101 for less than the price in the official Sony Centres. Anyway here are all thirty pages. Multiply prices by 3.5 to get 2020 prices. So all the CD Players were over £1000 in todays money or a months wages for me back then. That, and the price of CDs, explains why I didn't get one for another six years
I miss stores like this, bought lots of hi-fi goodness over the years from Comets, I'm pretty sure my first 'proper' hi-fi, a Sony MHC-701 came from Comets in the early 90's. We only really have Curry's or Richer Sounds in my area, though there is a good independent in Crawley called Avensys that sells some quite high-end stuff, I believe they have a Walkman museum upstairs too.....
View attachment 28777 Currys isn't much fun either unless you want a new TV, or a Bluetooth speaker. Quite a few chains like Comet have come and gone; Rumbellow's, Lasky's, Tempo (who built a large shop just up the road from work which is now a Kitchen and Bathroom place), a chain I don't even remember the name of where I bought my MSX computer, and Tandy (who were always twice the price of anyone else for Stereos unless they were having a half price sale). Richer Sounds are the only chain that seem to have gone from strength to strength. After admiring the Akai FD3L in Dixons at £400 about a year later Richer Sounds were advertising them for £200. At that point they only had two shops London and Birmingham, and most of the stuff they sold were discontinued models or catalogue returns. After driving the 100 miles to Birmingham I ended up getting one for £150 as the only ones they had were open box catalogue returns. That was about 1984. Within a few years they had a a much more local shop although apart from blank tapes I didn't buy much there as by then my priority was furniture and home appliances. That reminds me of yet another chain of shops. Co-op Homeworld. That was where most of my appliances, my Philips Roller 2, and much later a VCR came from. Finally most department stores had a decent electrical department. I bought my Panasonic CD Radio Cassette in Beales (who went bankrupt last year) and a TV and DVD player in House of Fraser. At £450 for the TV and £150 for the DVD player I probably spent more there on electricals than I have ever spent there on clothes.
Even the crappy chain stores had some really cool stuff show up and it was always changing with new stuff brought in. I've posted ads from my childhood from Fretter, Highland and ABC Appliance, even the low-end was nice, the Yorx, Emerson, Fisher was all at the department stores and they rarely had anything nice but even if they did, the low-end crap kind of killed their reputations. Now, it all looks very inexpensive but as a college kid I was making $3.35/hr USD, the pound was around 2x the dollar, if you take the Sansui TT retailing around $160 USD, I would have to work for over a week to afford that but bills like school, food and housing got in the way. I bought a used Technics for around $40 and thought I scored back then.
My college project back in 1979 was a Stereo Amplifier. To go with it I bought a new Garrard turntable for £50 (two weeks wages) and some speakers from Tandy (Radio Shack) when they were having a half price sale. Prices were more or less the same as in this catalogue so Japanese equipment was out of my price range. Most other kids at college ended up doing some kind of home construction for their audio systems even if it wasn't their official project. My best friend bought the chassis of a music centre, which one of the many surplus electronic dealers were advertising in an electronics magazine. Another built a system using Mullard modules, which like Sinclar's early HiFi modules were aimed at hobbyists and small companies who could make a case and do do basic wiring but who didn't want to have to assemble PCBs. I'm going to have to look through World Radio History to try and find the original adverts as I know the year, and many of the adverts ran for several months. That has just reminded me of a few years later in about 1982 when a different guy at college bought a colour monitor for his BBC computer for the bargain price of £100. The only issue was that again you didn't get a case ! Some company making arcade games must have overbought or gone bankrupt.
Ahh yes, I remember Tempo's, they didn't last long if I remember right? Similar lifespan to Best Buy in the UK? If anyone knows of an Akai FD-3 for sale, I would love to get my hands on one. I wish I knew what happened to the one my Grandad had, it's possible he bought his from Richer Sounds back in the day, more likely Dixons though. I really miss Tandy's though, I spent many hours in the Crawley branch, a shop that seemed to sell everything a nerd like me loves! My brother used to work for Co-op Homeworld in Crawley, he used to help load TV's and Hi-fi's into customer's cars, back when CRT widescreens weighed an absolute ton! Not many department stores left now, my parents bought a 4k Panasonic TV from John Lewis last year, mainly as my mum hates Curry's! I've also bought from Bentalls in Kingston, though it's shrunk quite a bit in the last year.
Packaged deals were huge here, a nice Japanese Amp, an ok TT and house speakers but those were only at the appliance stores, the department stores never discounted the cheap stuff, it was already inexpensive.
The nostalgia is strong with all those names. I am surprised Bentall's is still going. When John Lewis in Bristol moved to a new out of town shopping centre Bentall's took over their large town centre shop but that had a similar lifespan to Tempo, with them complaining that Bristolians weren't interested in upmarket products. The same shop is now a huge Primark which is probably more suited to the location. I checked and where Homeworld was is now a 24 hour Asda which is strange as it is just across the road from a 24 hour Sainbury's and only about two miles away from what was the U.Ks largest Asda Wal-Mart (actually branded as such). When I had my own house in Bristol that was actually my nearest shop, about a fifteen minute walk away, although back then it was a Carrefour Hypermarket. Whatever happened to the concept of Hypermarkets? They actually had a small but quite decent electrical department although, having just taken out a mortgage, all I ever bought there was food and records. I do remember seeing a Sharp FST TV there for the first time, which made every other TV look every old fashioned, and admiring a Citizen pocket TV which they had on display working inside a glass cabinet. The £100 price tag for something pocketable explained that. Back to the thread title of Comet I commented that I had been trying to get an old pricelist. That evening I checked and someone had one on eBay, coincidentally from 1983. I paid £5 for it which I considered was a fair price for somebody looking after it over the 38 years since it expired on 18th of June 1983. Back in the day they had these for free at the entrance to the store so you could compare their prices with other shops. The small print says that not every item is stocked in every shop, but if a shop didn't have stock they could get it shipped over; something that they actually did for me years later with a computer monitor. Looking at the items likely to be of interest to Stereo2Go readers. Cassette Tapes Personal Stereos Not that many high end models with the most expensive being the Sony WM-F5 Radio cassettes Again not many high end models, and that includes what they call Portable Hi-Fi by which I guess they mean ones with detachable speakers. The most expensive of those was the Sansui CP5 at £179.90. A nice enough system but not really high end. It wasn't that Comet didn't sell high end stuff. Move to the HiFi section and they will sell you an Akai 3 head cassette deck for £379.90 or if you want to move up from that an Auto Reverse, 3 Head, direct drive Akai Reel to Reel for £499.90. I think this explains why I never saw any high end boomboxes like a GF777 or M90 back in the 1980s. Normal retailers like Comet obviously thought there was more of a market for HiFi components than portables. That makes sense. The people with several £Hundreds to spend on audio were probably middle aged with a house to put it in. Given the interest in Aiwa Mini Systems this is what you got for £500 (including speakers and a turntable). Not really a mini to my eyes but it has the latest 1980s styling. Finally I found an interesting Video from the 8 bit Guy which explains why there are few places like Comet (who went bankrupt in 2012) left. It has been exactly the same story in the U.K. What used to be my local Comet is now "Family Bargains". The sort of place that will sell you an Akai branded toaster for£10.
