Portable Cassette Newspaper Ads!

I have both the ICF-SW7600GR (an updated version of the same radio in silver with more memories) and the ICF-SW100E, both bought used. The latter was a memorable purchase. A friend was asking £120 for it at a radio rally but made the mistake of leaving his fiancee running his table. As soon as I picked it up to look at it she said "you can have it for £80". I still got an invite to their wedding .

As for things being expensive, yesterday I watched a BBC review of "cheap mobile phones" of which the most expensive was £379. I suppose nowadays people will say that if you want to find out the news in a different country can just look it up on your phone. Because of that there are far less shortwave broadcasts to listen to. A massive shortwave transmitting station about 50 miles from here has now been demolished https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampisham_Down

I have just thought of a major difference though. Sony made the ICF-7600GR for at least ten years. In fact it was the last high performance shortwave radio they made. Of the phones reviewed, the longest any manufacturer said they would support their phone was until 2023. In the mobile phone business a four year old phone is considered to be obsolete.

 

I can't put my hands on the ICF-SW100E at the moment but here is the ICF-SW7600GR together with the ICF-SW2001D (known as the ICF-SW2010 in the USA.

The latter is still thought by some people to be the best book size Shortwave receiver ever made https://radiojayallen.com/sony-icf-2010-an-all-time-classic/
It was manufactured by Sony for 17 years I did have the ICF-SW77 that was supposed to replace it but I didn't like the ergonomics and they have a reputation for leaking capacitors so I sold it while it was still working. I still have quite a few other Sony shortwave radios including a 7600DS bought new in 1989. At one point I was considering trying to collect the whole range but stopped when I got this mint boxed ICF-SW2001D.

 

I is actually quite a while since I tuned around to see what is still on. Certainly not as much as there used to be. Shortwave hasn't been sold off and is very unlikely to be, being an international resource. A growing problem is interference from things that aren't supposed to transmit like ADSL internet and LED bulbs.

Here is the ICF_SW77 I sold in action,

I'm surprised the video has that many views. I only made it to prove the radio still worked.

As for what the deal with shortwave is, that is a bit like asking a Walkman enthusiast what the deal with cassettes is. Back in 1978 I spent my first weeks wages on an RCA Shortwave receiver (which just 33 years earlier had been made to fit in a B17 aircraft). On Sunday mornings I would go to the Air Training Corp where we took part in a country wide Shortwave net. Around the same time someone I went to school with spent what must have been two months of his wages on a Yaesu FRG7. In the early 1980s a friend at college, who was obsessed with pirate radio, which at the time was mainly on shortwave, bought a Sony ICF2001 (not to be confused with the later D model) which was their very first keypad entry shortwave receiver https://swling.com/blog/2015/03/my-new-to-me-sony-icf-2001-shortwave-radio/

As I was explaining to my wife the other day, up until the 1990s, if you wanted to hear music you either had to buy a recording, or listen to the radio where there were far fewer stations available than today.

There must still be a market for upmarket Shortwave Radios as although Sony have stopped making them, companies like C Crane, https://ccrane.com/ Eton, https://etoncorp.com/collections/all/products/elite750 and a load of obscure Chinese manufacturers like Tecsun who actually make the radios still sell them
This is the latest one Shortwave Enthusiasts are talking about https://radiojayallen.com/tecsun-pl-990x-am-sw-lw-mp-bluetooth-mp3-player/
They might not beat the old Sonys overall but they do in some areas.

 

The original reason I joined Stereo2Go was to answer someone's question "Why are vintage boomboxes so expensive?". The first US inflation calculator I found shows a multiplier of 2.8 https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ So even using that low Multiplier that JVC M60 was over $1000 in 2020 money. Now look at the price of that Onkyo system !

I don't know about US prices but in the UK the official Bank of England inflation calculator seems to be way out for some major purchases like houses. In 1986 I bought my first house. The people I bought it from had a £600 Panasonic HiFi VCR in their £24000 house. Using the Land Registry data I discovered that the house was sold in September for £217000. The Bank of England inflation calculator shows a multiplier of 2.95. I suppose if you took the average of the VCR (using the £280 DVD recorder they currently sell) and the House you might be close.

p.s. Thinking about my original post in which I compared the price of my new Boombox to my new Motorbike I just found this


After ten minutes searching I challenge Mister X to find a price for the US equivalent
https://www.pinterest.fr/pin/273241902371120002/
I have found about six US adverts but none quotes a price.

 

I knew you would find it.
https://www.poundsterlinglive.com/b...rical-spot-exchange-rates/usd/USD-to-CAD-1981 gives the exchange rate as about 1.2 in 1981 giving a US$ price of about $707. So for the price of two JVC M60s you could buy a Honda Passport.

My sister had two Honda C90s but they both got stolen the second being found a few days later burnt out.
A friend had a Yamaha that looked very similar to the Honda but had the distinction of being shaft drive rather than using a chain.

I thought the prices in that 1981 advert looked low but the US$ to £ exchange rate was around 2 back then compared to 1.33 today.

In the past I posted some UK prices from the same era.
http://stereo2go.com/forums/threads/cassette-boombox-bargains-back-in-1980.4337/
The Sharp GF9595 was more expensive than the M60

 

A picture of college AKA the set of Casualty back from my last day there in 1983

If I had turned 180 degrees there would have been another 50 or more bikes down the edge of the car park.

There were similar rules here in the UK. You could have a 49cc "Moped" at 16, but at 17 you could ride a bike of up to 250cc all without any kind of training.
Once the Japanese manufacturers got them going over 100MPH the law was changed and new "learners" could only have 125CC.
I just found this video of a fully restored 100MPH Yamaha "Learner" bike from 1981 on Youtube.
A bloke at college had one of the first in the UK.