Yes Radio Raheem being happy with what you have is the key, there is always something better out there.
yes i changed my set up tocool, those big things i had just had no sound quality to them, i needed to use 4 eq's just to get decent sound out of them now I'm using 2 eq my monitor audio and 2 other pairs of speakers and the sound is great with subsonic bass lol, my biggest mistake was believing the monitor audio were 200w rms, anybody tells you that and there insane you would be heard miles away if they were, i have excepted there about 50w and I'm more than happy with that lad
It’s all about choosing careful and making sure you have synergy, as you know I don’t buy anything unless I have heard it and preferably in my room with the rest of my kit. That way any mistakes are down to a minimum.
The topic brought a lot of discussion already. Its good to see some old members show up and post comments. Anyway, I have a question for members: Which walkman units will be most collectible and hard to find in the future? and Why?
There's going to be several models, and for good or bad, this site and a few others will fuel it. The super-rare, country or event exclusive models, especially if they are part of a set. Sony Special Edition, especially the ones given to music exec's Any "high-end" maybe $180 + USD model JDM only While I love the D6, I think many first time buyers will rethink the time and expense of this model, plus it's huge, and move to something that more exemplifies the portable player.
If anyone knew that they could buy a load as their pension plan The problem is there are too many variables. Yesterday I was chatting with a colleague who had visited a Radio Museum (which apparently hadn't changed much since I visited thirty years ago). I told him how Guardians of the Galaxy had increased the price of a TPS-L2 over twenty fold, turning it into a valuable, collectable antique. So much in the market depends on sentiment. I have already mentioned "The Techmoan Effect" where any old equipment he reviews that is reasonably good seems to go up in price. If someone was unscrupulous they could even do a "Pump and Dump" scheme. Buy a load of a half decent, readily available model, declare it to be a hidden gem that was actually the best personal stereo ever made, then sell at a profit. Finally a word of warning from when I was more active in share dealing. I found it easy to spot bargains and watch the price go up. It was knowing when to sell was the difficult bit. As people have already said, at some point Walkmans will be in the same category as wind up Gramophones. I also wonder what would happen if someone made a convincing TPS-L2 reproduction. That happened with complete ranges of toy cars and model trains.
You don't need a lot of buyers for the "Techmoan Effect," some of the equipment he reviews only comes up for sale a few times a year at the most. Hundred of thousands watch his videos, you only need 20 or so to make the market move. When we're talking about $50 portables or $200 mini-stereos a few more dollars won't matter to the serious buyer. I am surprised nobody has done a new clone version, they were cranking out the clones within months of the TPS-L2 release. It has been a wild ride, I'm driven more by design and just being able to play music or listen to the radio, theoretically the players should be valuble as long as the media lasts and the music stays relevant but, and it's a big but, the equipment will need major maintance at some point, techs are retiring and most people don't want to even attempt a repair. On the other hand this could drive prices up more as the supply and parts chain start drying up. As a side note, since vintage cars are very similar to collectors, the value of vintage mass-produced cars is going up, it seems like they are turning to dust faster than ever and nobody thought of saving them. I just saw a sweet late 80's Honda Prelude and early 90's 300zx this week, those cars still look very impressive.
I watch a lot of American car videos on Youtube with fascination. Very few people have room to collect cars in the U.K. and the costs of keeping a car roadworthy are higher (fingers crossed for my annual MOT safety inspection tomorrow). A few years ago a friend sold her Honda Prelude for £250 when she got her Mercedes SLK. Personally I don't even have room to store another bicycle in the garage, let alone a single car, as it is full of old computers and other rubbish/quality antiques.
I've built up a nice little collection of mid-range walkmans including some of the Sony anniversary models EX5, EX1HG, EX808HG by buying spares /repair and fixing them. The most expensive model that I've ever bought was £74 (Sep 21). I haven't ventured into the world of D6Cs or DD models yet but have watched a few go for silly money and that puts me off crossing that line. A lot of the units that I buy just need a new belt and a good clean up. I do check that the tape speed if fine and replaced the pinch rollers on a few models when they were worn. I only really buy working models if they come with the original accessories and are at sensible prices and only ones that I can easily resell. I've still got a few Aiwas in bits waiting to be recapped but I see those as longer term restoration projects for the rainy days. There are lots of bargain Panasonic models out there which are fairly easy to fix if you can use a soldering iron. I have noticed the Techmoan effect on the Sony EX range but it also means that I can take advantage of it too I picked up a Sony EX922 for £23 today - of course at that price it doesn't work and the front cover is detached but it could be fixable and it came with the box, user manual and the battery caddy. There are still lots of bargains out there but sometimes you have to speculate to accumulate.
I forget that most of the world has those storage issues, we love our cars and trucks here and most people have space for their extra cruzin car. It's amazing how many very valuable cars are found in barns and sheds after sitting for decades. There's definately bargains but you have to look all of the time, I just picked up a BB grail for pretty cheap, it hasn't arrived yet so I'm not saying anything. I've been looking for DD models for years but they've always lead the market in pricing. It wasn't too long ago they were around $60 USD, now it's triple that so I focus my attention on the oddball stuff and early players. Down in the forum reader, old member John Edwards was getting a unit a day and he found some really cool stuff, I re-read his threads once in a while to find today's bargains. I'm not in it to make money, I just love 80's design and I think we jumped the shark back then. Everything seems so boring now, I'd hang on stuff for years when I was a kid and most of it went up in value. Now I toss products that quit working, there's some exceptions but not many.
@Boodokhan - my second obsession in this life is Sci-Fi, and one of the Fathers of the genre (Robert Sheckley) once mentioned that in order to ask The Right Question you have to know the Answer Yours is the Right Question... My say - hi-end AIWA walkmans. Why? Not as many as DD Sonys had been sold, absolutely ALL of AIWA's are dead by now because of a bad batch of electrolytics they used. We have a few members here at S2G with totally unbelievable collections of minty-boxed AIWA Walkmans. BUT: from my personal experience with Discmans, the damage done by leaking electrolytics gets REAL bad: 5-7 years ago reviving Sony D-90 Discman was a 2-hour job, with D-99 it was a 10-min cleaning... nowadays it's a minor nightmare. I won't even touch any Sony D-66 Discman now: damage from the acid is just too gross to bother!!! AIWA's traces were much thinner than those by Sony, so the only AIWA's still surviving into 2025 will be the ones serviced, the rest are just paperweights/doorstops I am thinking from the 'collector's' side of the Question: if I am a collector of Discmans (as I am!) there is a bunch of Sony D-555 for sale at any time, and at the prices I pay for a single power cord from Schunyata Research. But if I want to get Denon DCP-150 or DCP-100, or (God Forbid!), TOTL Kenwood Discman, even nowadays I have to wait and to hunt, and to beg! the price is not that much of concern, just try getting boxed/minty Technics SL-XP7 within a month and report back here. SL-XP7 is actually a bad example compared to AIWA Walkmans because they are indestructible
What is so special about JDM models? About Aiwa's there are some models more prone to cap failure (I've read that most of those made in Singapore, from late 80's - 89 probably onwards). Pretty much all Walkamans Sony/Panasonic/Aiwa/you name it have problems by now. And if you want them to last, servicing is necessary.And there aren't that many skilled people who do that.
There's nothing special about JDM Models, they just made a lot more for the home market, different colors and logos. If you have home audio, it's the same, they had statement pieces that never got released in the USA. One of the features some of the cool players have is either built in FM transmitter or a plug in FM module. You could play your tape, and with this feature, tune in any FM tuner to the right station and play it on a bigger stereo. I don't think we had it in the USA due to radio interference so they couldn't sell the models in a lot of countries. I really like Superscope/Marantz Boomboxes and Portables, most were only sold in Japan, and surrounding area after 1982, including the only three-head boombox made, the Superscope CRS-5000.
There is difficulty in answering this question exactly because there are many types of buyers which buy for different reasons: 1. People who buy just for display; 2. People who buy for personal collection; 3. People who buy for repair/restoration and reselling; Something that I pointed out earlier in the thread is how many walkmans were made, especially SONY models. I just finished restoring @Emiel 's WM-DX100 and noticed it has serial number 141 564. I'd say probably at least 150.000 units were produced. However this is the first DX-100 I have my hands on and the unit itself seems extremely rare. If one is to find this unit for sale, it's going to be expensive, because of its "rarity". But is a unit like this truly rare or its just more obscure and not that popular ? Maybe many which still own one are not willing to sell (this may change in the future). It's also unlikely that 99% of the DX100s went to trash. I really like its sound after restoring, but won't be looking for one in the near future nor willing to spend thousands on one. Another unit that seems pretty rare is the SONY WM-10, although this may be due to the fact that most of these do not work and are hard to repair or even not repairable in some cases. However, despite the fact that the vast majority are sold as non-working, the prices are not that low. Some sellers even put in the title "For display or repair", which indicates a pretty collectable unit despite not working. Compared to last year, there are a lot more so called "rare" units for sale that I have seen this year on ebay and other sites, which proves @Mister X was right that many of these devices are still in people's drawers waiting for a new life. Coming back to the question, I think the most collectible and the hard the find ones are not necessarily one and the same. There are many obscure devices which were/are not that popular and people don't consider them collectable. To me it seems the most collectable ones are from 2 categories: - the very popular walkmans that a significant part of the community knows about; - the ones that are truly collectable because of real rarity, limited editions, anniversary editions, boxed units, etc.
I don't think the serial number matches the number made. If I had to guess there would be a "batch" number followed by the number for the batch. I don't think anyone has posted models with 00000001 or anything similar. There has been some threads on the rare collectables down in the forum reader, unfortunately a lot of the photos have disappeared. For some reason the big collectors don't chime in, Kent has a huge collection and there's a few other guys in his region that have posted amazing collections. Maybe they don't want the world to know what the super-rare valuable ones are. Something also interesting is the "exclusive" units never showed up in the boombox world.
It would be interesting to find out more about those serial numbers. I do agree with you that the serial is unlikely to match the number of units made (at least not exactly). However, in the WM-DD range I have seen both low (in the tens of thousands) and high numbers (hunderds of thousands), so with what I know at this point I can only assume that at least 100K-200K of such units were produced (from each model). I happen to have a first generation SONY WM-3 in my collection which has a serial in the 10.000s range. Also seen WM-3s with serial in the hunderds of thousands, which are always second generation ones (with silver lining around cassette door window). If I were to guess, I think the serials have at least 5 digits, meaning the 10.000 mark would be the lowest. I'm reffering to the SONY marking here, other manufacturers are likely to have different numbering systems. EDIT: Another question would be how those serials differ depending on different markets ? It's not unlikely that the same serial numbers can exist on 2 or more different markets. Some units were only made for some specific markets. I'm seeing in the WM-10 service manual that it is written: US Model/Canadian model. This can either mean it was only available for these 2 markets (which can justify its rarity if true) or that there is a different model for other markets. Clearly want to learn more about this, so if any of the members know please share.
The TPS-L2 is explicit @Valentin about serial number cut-off ranges for specific markets. It seems unlikely that in Canada the 'old' model did twice as well as in the US, before introducing the revision. I share the same opinion as @Mister X : batch numbering can be a good reason to explain. These very low numbers I have not yet encountered, 17yyy when I recall correctly for a D3. All DD33s I have seen in real life have serial numbers between 120000-260000. If any forum member has a unit with a serial under 10000 or 5000, please post the model and photo.
It seems that although I've opened this TPS-L2 manual many times, clearly did not pay much attention to that section. To me, there are a couple of unclear things: - are those numbers in order ? in the sense that from 120.000 to 260.000 (your example) all 140.000 units were really produced ? Or produced but some of the stock was never sold. - the above picture does not say anything about those different market numbering overlapping with each other. Like how do we know US market doesn't have only odd numbers and Canadian one only even numbers ? It's a random example, the reality is likely to be more complex than this. It seems unlikely to me as well, but how do we know the Canadian market did not start from serial 106.001 (old model) ? If I remember right, have seen a SONY walkman with only 4 digits serial online. Can't remember for sure though. Some things are clear: SONY produced about 200 milion walkmans in total. Even here there is the question: should network walkmans, MDs, or Discmans labeled "walkman" be also included in this number ? It's also possible that most of these units were the later ones, like the EX series. However, given how many completely new designs SONY had made, for the sake of rentability, I have to believe it has produced at least 50K samples of each one. Maybe not all of them were sold, that's also possible.
I have a wmf10 = 345K .... a wmF20 = 12K ..Wm 30 = 65k .... wm20 = 120k --> 130K ... wm f107 = 34k ..wm 7 = 61k..wm 3 = 144k ..wm r202 = 309K ..DD1 = 73k ... d6c = 220k ---> 221k ... I can't list them all ... sure to find a device with a low and difficult serial number because it depends on the condition of the item and willingness to pay ... sometimes it happened to see units with low serial numbers at a low price ... But they were also in poor condition
