Hi, Does anyone know what the original price of the WM-D6C was? I'm assuming it changed price many times over it's life and varies by region, but just curious. Thanks!
Here's a Japanese Cut Sheet from 1986, there might be more pricing in the newspaper ad thread. I'm pretty sure it was $450-600 USD during those early years, I don't remember any blow-out sales. US Stores rarely sold at the retail price, usually 10-25% off these numbers..
Buried in that Boombox Archaeology thread (was it there?) there were magazine reviews of D6C along with prices. I was surprised they had around $299 if I remember correctly? I read through the entire 30+ page thread 2 weeks ago and saved the interesting ads and articles over on another computer. Anyway, yeah, definitely the D6 and, to a lesser extent, the D6C were the best "Walkmans" Sony made. I can sweep away the rest with a dramatic flourish of my hand D6 and D6C would be excellent for paranormal EVP field recordings - even to this day - I reckon. There are some that still say analog recordings have their strengths in this department...
In the UK it was £250 and by the end it was £330. In the 80's the price was Dollar for Pound, so £250 in the UK and $250 in the US.
Very interesting stuff. Thanks for all the replies! That's a huge discrepancy between the yen price and the dollar price back in the day, even taking into account the exchange rate.
Everything has always costed more in Japan, i don't know why. I use to ask my dad when he travelled to Japan to bring me electronic things back, he always told its cheaper to buy it elsewhere.
Best price I saw was $239 for a WM-D6C in 1984 from a discount retailer. I had the original 1984 MSRP of 64,000 Yen converting to $320 U.S.
I've found in general that locally built products are more in the host country. I'm not sure of the dynamics but it's always a huge let down to see the pricing. Now the used market is the complete opposite, I see huge bargains but shipping might be an issue if it doesn't fit in the luggage.
Well, the used market for WM-D6Cs certainly appears to be quite healthy on eBay. There are a LOT of units available, and most at quite hefty prices, even for ones that are not working. It took me MONTHS of shopping to find a good one at a reasonable price. It also seems that many of the units for sale are by flippers, or at least by owners who don't know much about their units.
My favorite listing is those that have a cassette player recorder of any brand or whatever being deck Walkman boombox whatever and they can't press a button and find out if anything works while it's plugged in but they can say the radio's working LOL
