Globe 350 selenium rectifiers

[Steve - K4HX]

I'm sure you are centering your retirement income around all those "valuable" radios.  

Also, you have to include your time in that equation. Going to tests, doing repairs and rest only takes away from any perceived value, even if you got the the radios free. It's likely you could make more working at McDonalds per hour than buying/selling and working on radios.

Too much of it comes from flawed thinking that these radios will be worth something like vintage cars. Not so. Adjusting for inflation, most of this stuff is not worth any more than it was new. The market demand is just not there. If some want to keep their stuff original, fine. I don't really care. Just please do not act like you are doing something special or significant.

True if it were purchased new. I bought many of my old radios before they were cool.

[W2VW]

I'm sure you are centering your retirement income around all those "valuable" radios.  

Also, you have to include your time in that equation. Going to tests, doing repairs and rest only takes away from any perceived value, even if you got the the radios free. It's likely you could make more working at McDonalds per hour than buying/selling and working on radios.

Too much of it comes from flawed thinking that these radios will be worth something like vintage cars. Not so. Adjusting for inflation, most of this stuff is not worth any more than it was new. The market demand is just not there. If some want to keep their stuff original, fine. I don't really care. Just please do not act like you are doing something special or significant.

I found a lot of the stuff in the woods behind my house.

True if it were purchased new. I bought many of my old radios before they were cool.

[Steve - K4HX]

He was too young to have been in WWII.

" When I asked him if he was going to only use it in a B-17 to contact the Army Air Corps, since THAT was original, he suddenly had to QRT "

S,

Maybee he was a NAVY man who drove a PBY.


klc

[K5UJ]

I get the original thing up to a point (vintage knobs, not painting the R390 neon green) but I draw the line at stuffing capacitors.

The extreme seems to be found in the Collins fanatics.  Somewhere in the past 15 years or so there's an ER article by some ham in Arkansas about how he restored is KW1 to exactly the way it was shipped from Collins, because the original Collins engineering was perfection and improvement was impossible.  He may not have put it that way but that seemed to be his attitude.  So he ran the clipper, the splatter filter, maybe even the 872s, can't remember, but he also spent years researching the paint and managed to find the old man in Iowa who used to work in the Collins paint room so he could find out exactly how the rig had been painted and got the company that supplied the original paint to mix him a batch.  A photo in the article showed this fellow next to his KW1, looking unhappy.  I think if you are that obsessive, you're going to be miserable most of the time.

[VE3AJM]

We all know of some hams whose interest/activity with the vintage equipment and ham radio seem to revolve around buying and selling and wheeling and dealing. These types seem to drive a lot of this extreme thinking.

But you don't hear these guys on the air all that often, especially since many of the on air swap nets have gone away.

Its when they try and impose their own personal views on others that it gets silly.

Al VE3AJM

[KE5YTV]

It's a shame everyone can't be normal like we are!!! 

[N5RLR]

Concerning Pintos and Crown Victorias, they only go boom once they're hit.  Otherwise, they're just as safe as anything else. [And this from growing up around bodyshops where a lot of cars should've been totalled and weren't.]