A Real Heart-Stopper
DumpsterDiver
remember ever seeing first hour action like this one .... $2800+
within one hour of listing!
And the pictures are TERRIBLE! If you download em and futz & fiddle
with the brightness and contrast, you can sorta make out what this item
is, but it's a real struggle.
The seller started it at $4.99 ... and I figured I might cop it for $20
or so if I waited till the last minute. Oh well ...
Betcha the seller's a little surprised too!
Ebay Item # 140023097756 (sorry, couldn't get the link to paste
correctly, but this one's worth the extra effort to search it up).
DD
Art's Antique Radios
But it is basically two guys who want it badly and they have too much money
:)
"DumpsterDiver" <morc...@att.net> wrote in message
news:1156646665.8...@m79g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
Steve J
a couple of radio items and did not know what they were. Nice house
sale attic find.
He is surprised. I'm sure he's very, very surprised. I imagine he's
extremely happy about the DeForest price. Over $6,000 now and still in
it's first day. Bet he paid under $40 for it.
Here's the link:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140023097756
On 26 Aug 2006 19:44:25 -0700, "DumpsterDiver" <morc...@att.net>
wrote:
Buck Frobisher
news:ju9Ig.469427$Mn5.152694@pd7tw3no...
> I've been watching this one for a few hours, found it when it was just put
> up for auction. There is one guy in particular bidding on it, bigalarsen,
> been watching the stuff he has been winning (been outbid by him several
> times). He must have an incredible collection by now.
Yeah, I often wonder if this type of item will keep its value in another 20
years when a lot less of us baby-boomers are around. After all, it's not
like a Zenith Strat, that has obvious beauty and therefore is desirable
without knowing any more about.
This thing looks like it was made with plumbing parts.
Steven
He or she is either rich or a broker and he's bought dozens of pieces
for thousands of dollars. Here is one of at least two DeForest items, I
noted he loves Grebes too...
2,280 food stamps:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=38033&item=6636388619
Scott W. Harvey
> Seller contacted me through my web site to let me know he was posting
> a couple of radio items and did not know what they were. Nice house
> sale attic find.
> He is surprised. I'm sure he's very, very surprised. I imagine he's
> extremely happy about the DeForest price. Over $6,000 now and still in
> it's first day. Bet he paid under $40 for it.
>
This is an excellent example of the impact of ebay on pricing in our
hobby. 23 years ago, a fellow collector of mine found one of these
sitting on a table at a flea market for $20.00. He is not an
early-riser, so most surely lots of eyes saw it before he did. He bought
it, more out of curiosity than anything else. He cleaned it up and kept
in on a shelf with some other early radio stuff he had in his
collection. He kept it there for maybe a year and then decided to remove
it to make room for something else because it wasn't complete (like the
eBay one, his also had no tube). Rather than sell it outright, he
donated it to a museum devoted to early Silicon Valley history (which
was apropo, since DeForest was a Stanford fellow for a time).
That wasn't a hard decision for him to make because at that time the
unit may have been worth a couple of hundred dollars, tops.
How times have changed. Now, you've got people practically pounding each
other into the pavement for the privilege of getting one in worse
shape for "only" $7000.00. The whole thing seems rather absurd to me.
Waltons have had similar ridiculous price appreciation in the post-eBay
era, but at least you can actually LISTEN to them!
-Scott
Your Uncle Kenny from Jersey City
1) typical rampant un-controlled e-screw shill bidding
2) two or more clowns with MUCH more money &
too much free time on their hands
3) ...a radio that many on RAR+P *wished* that THEY were
selling on e-screw right now!!!
: )
jim menning
"Scott W. Harvey" <NOT_M...@email.com> wrote in message
news:ecsnn...@news4.newsguy.com...
> Steve J wrote:
>>
>> He is surprised. I'm sure he's very, very surprised. I imagine he's
>> extremely happy about the DeForest price. Over $6,000 now and still in
>> it's first day. Bet he paid under $40 for it.
>>
>
> This is an excellent example of the impact of ebay on pricing in our hobby.
It's a perfect example of how eBay saved this item, that otherwise could likely have
been assumed to be worthless and thrown away. EBay gave the seller an opportunity to
get this to an owner who will appreciate it, and get paid a good value for it rather
than a mere pittance from some greedy collector, dealer, or profiteer.
jim menning
Hagstar
"Buck Frobisher" <farsi...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:12f3g6d...@news.supernews.com...
>
> Yeah, I often wonder if this type of item will keep its value in another
> 20 years when a lot less of us baby-boomers are around.
No, it won't. If it's interesting only to collectors and valuable, dump it
within the next decade.
John H.
Mark Oppat
will cause them to bring out more items like it (or, what they think is
"just like" it). eBay has saved so many many items, it should get the
Presidential Recycling Award , as soon as we get someone intelligent back
in office who cares.
Mark Oppat
"jim menning" <jmenni...@new.rr.com> wrote in message
news:pqpIg.68670$Nt2....@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com...
Scott W. Harvey
I'm afraid you're right, John...
Check out this picture:
http://users3.ev1.net/~wck5/muchow/view19.jpg
Muchow Auction audience.....
Plenty of grey hairs in that crowd. Somewhere, there's another crowd
picture of the auction at a different time, and the audience appears to
be even older. A lot of the folks at that event seemed to be well
capitalized retired guys, and the auction consisted of an inordinate
number of truly hardcore collectors going for this or that item that
they had wanted all their lives (at least that's what the final bids
seemed to reflect). Many of the items that fetched the highest bids were
from the earliest days of radio.
At the risk of sounding insensitive, it is inevitable that these guys
making the big buys on the early stuff are going to croak someday. Most
will probably be deceased in the next 20 years or so.
When they go, who is going to take their place?. I really don't see a
heck of a lot of people stepping up to the plate.
Just a couple of months ago, an officer in our club attempted to unload
a couple of very nice A-K 10 breadboards in our annual big auction
event. They were just about as good as any I've seen, and at least one
of the two included a matching speaker. Neither made reserve, and
neither came close to cracking the $1000 mark. Sure, he could sell them
on eBay and get top dollar, but I think he would've preferred that they
went to a local collector from our club.
I think a lot of the younger people in this hobby now are a lot like
me...I really don't have a lot of interest in radios that were produced
in the pre-superhet days. There are just too many of them that look too
similar. I have a few of them in my collection, but none of them I would
count as my prized, favorite radios. I like the 1930s radios because
they offer a maximimum of performance, elegant and distinctive styling,
and a minimum of fiddle factor. They are players as well as displayers.
It doesn't hurt that they are the type of old sets I encountered at
estate sales and thrift shops in my youth (I am 44 now).
If I had to guess, I would say that many of the better items that were
sold at the muchow auction will ultimately wind up in a Smithsonian-type
place because the owners will be too old and frail to devote much time
to the hobby anymore and will donate them, or they will die and the
surviving members of the families will not know what to do with
valuable and historical pieces.
None of these scenarios bodes particularly well for price appreciation
beyond the next 10 or 15 years or so.
-Scott
Hagstar
> Waltons have had similar ridiculous price appreciation in the post-eBay
> era, but at least you can actually LISTEN to them!>
In the words of a well know Carolina early set collector opposed to all
restoration-
"If I want to LISTEN to a radio I'll sit in my truck."
John H.
John Byrns
"DumpsterDiver" <morc...@att.net> wrote:
Can anyone tell me what this thing is? It doesn't appear to contain any
tuning components, so I assume it isn't a radio, what is it?
Regards,
John Byrns
Surf my web pages at, http://users.rcn.com/jbyrns/
Alan Douglas
>Can anyone tell me what this thing is? It doesn't appear to contain any
>tuning components, so I assume it isn't a radio, what is it?
It's a De Forest RJ-8 Audion control box, first sold in February
1916. It appears to be in good original condition and it is extremely
rare.
To answer someone else previously, it's listed as an Audion because
that's what the nameplate says, which is all the seller had to go on,
at first. That's the generic nameplate that de Forest put on all of
his devices.
Alan
Bruce Mercer
> If I had to guess, I would say that many of the better items that were
> sold at the muchow auction will ultimately wind up in a Smithsonian-type
> place because the owners will be too old and frail to devote much time to
> the hobby anymore and will donate them, or they will die and the surviving
> members of the families will not know what to do with valuable and
> historical pieces.
>
> None of these scenarios bodes particularly well for price appreciation
> beyond the next 10 or 15 years or so.
>
> -Scott
>
I don't know.......maybe. In the phonograph field that doesn't seem to be
the case for really early items,
or even later items into the Diamond Disc era. Certain DD records easily now
bring 150.00 to 300.00 apiece.
The lateral cut records are doing the same.
Tinfoil machines now easily fetch 30,000.+ I hope the trend continues for
early examples of both fields.
I sure haven't seen the prices fall in the last 40 years, and yes, I am
concerned about what will happen to
my collection when I am no longer its' custodian. I guess the next 10 or 15
years will show whether that
scenario plays out or not.
Bruce
John Byrns
<adouglasatgis.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> >Can anyone tell me what this thing is? It doesn't appear to contain any
> >tuning components, so I assume it isn't a radio, what is it?
>
> It's a De Forest RJ-8 Audion control box, first sold in February
> 1916. It appears to be in good original condition and it is extremely
> rare.
OK, but what is it used for, and how is it used? Or to put it another way
what is its relationship to radios?
Alan Douglas
>> It's a De Forest RJ-8 Audion control box, first sold in February
>> 1916. It appears to be in good original condition and it is extremely
>> rare.
>
>OK, but what is it used for, and how is it used? Or to put it another way
>what is its relationship to radios?
It provides the operating voltages for the Audion tube. You
connect batteries to it, and it has the filament rheostat, and plate
potentiometer (the semicircular piece of graphite with the wiper arm).
The seller also mentioned he was selling a Colby tuner separately,
which would have gone with this box to make a complete radio circuit.
Colby stuff is rare also. As I remember it was a wireless school near
Albany or something. Colby had a writeup in the AWA Old TImers
Bulletin years ago.
Alan
Tim Mullen
>Hagstar wrote:
>> "Buck Frobisher" <farsi...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:12f3g6d...@news.supernews.com...
>>
>>> Yeah, I often wonder if this type of item will keep its value in another
>>> 20 years when a lot less of us baby-boomers are around.
>>
>> No, it won't. If it's interesting only to collectors and valuable, dump it
>> within the next decade.
>I'm afraid you're right, John...
>Check out this picture:
>http://users3.ev1.net/~wck5/muchow/view19.jpg
>Muchow Auction audience.....
>Plenty of grey hairs in that crowd. Somewhere, there's another crowd
>picture of the auction at a different time, and the audience appears to
>be even older.
I don't think you can draw any conclusions from that other than
there were a lot of old guys at that auction. Ralph Muchow was old
school, and perhaps its not surprising that many of his contemporaries
who knew him, or knew of him, would attend his estate auction.
>At the risk of sounding insensitive, it is inevitable that these guys
>making the big buys on the early stuff are going to croak someday. Most
>will probably be deceased in the next 20 years or so.
>When they go, who is going to take their place?. I really don't see a
>heck of a lot of people stepping up to the plate.
I've raised this point before, and I'll say it again: you can't
judge membership and interest in such a hobby by public representation.
The best you can conclude from a straw poll taken at an auction or meet
is that a lot of old guys go to auctions and meets.
>I think a lot of the younger people in this hobby now are a lot like
>me...I really don't have a lot of interest in radios that were produced
>in the pre-superhet days. There are just too many of them that look too
>similar. I have a few of them in my collection, but none of them I would
>count as my prized, favorite radios. I like the 1930s radios because
>they offer a maximimum of performance, elegant and distinctive styling,
>and a minimum of fiddle factor. They are players as well as displayers.
>It doesn't hurt that they are the type of old sets I encountered at
>estate sales and thrift shops in my youth (I am 44 now).
I just turned 46, and happen to love the early stuff. A lot of
my buying over the past few years, in fact, has been early scientific
instruments and associated machinery. The appeal to me is two-fold:
aesthetics and history. I don't really need to measure the Earth's
magnetic field vector, but it's neat to be able to do so. :)
That's another way of saying performance and operation is definitely
secondary to me (I work in modern electronics and have performance up
to here). Also, perhaps unlike other collectors, I can't *stand* the
stuff from the era of my youth.
How contrary am I? I'm not so sure. I do know it's not just the
gray hairs going for the earliest and most historic stuff. I don't
believe you can make a fair estimate based on who shows up at an
auction. It may simply be that crowd is the one with the time or
predilection to attend. Hell, a lot of weekends I'm not even in
bed by the time these auctions start. :)
--
Tim Mullen
------------------------------------------------------------------
Am I in your basement? Looking for antique televisions, fans, etc.
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Tim Mullen
>yes, I am concerned about what will happen to my collection when
>I am no longer its' custodian.
I'll take good care of it, I promise.
Hey! Did you sign that little paper I sent ya? Nothing
important, no need to read it over... :) :) :)
Tim Mullen
>Tinfoil machines now easily fetch 30,000.+ I hope the trend continues for
>early examples of both fields.
>I sure haven't seen the prices fall in the last 40 years
I'm with Bruce on this one. In fact, the object in question is a
rather odd example to bring up in an argument otherwise. Within the
first DAY of listing the price has shot thru the roof! Very, very
few artifacts command this kind of attention.
Yes, perhaps breadboards have peaked, but prices have hardly dropped
like a stone. The only time I've seen a drastic downturn is in a
relatively new field of collecting. I also collect toasters, and
organized collecting -- replete with price guides, clubs, etc. etc. --
is fairly recent. Certain toasters hit the ceiling until other folk
started paying attention and more examples came out of the woodwork.
I don't see that happening with wireless. People have been after
them for a sufficient number of decades, and original production was
so small, I don't think there's a lot more of them to be found. One
or two may trickle into the light, such as the item on auction, but
I don't see hundreds being dug up over the next couple of decades.
Plus, regardless of the personal appeal, the historic importance
of these machines is undeniable. This is something from the VERY
beginning of the communications era! We hadn't even been an industrialized
nation very long when this was built. It will only continue to be seen
as an example from the nascent cradle of the modern era.
John Byrns
<adouglasatgis.net> wrote:
Thanks Alan, I think I have got it now. Thanks also for explaining the
"the semicircular piece of graphite with the wiper arm" which had me
totally baffled, a "plate potentiometer" is something I haven't seen in
many, if any, radios before.
Bruce Mercer
>>yes, I am concerned about what will happen to my collection when
>>I am no longer its' custodian.
>
> I'll take good care of it, I promise.
>
> Hey! Did you sign that little paper I sent ya? Nothing
> important, no need to read it over... :) :) :)
>
> --
> Tim Mullen
Didn't need to. I've already taken steps involving certain items in my
collection. Just make sure I always have your current address. (And in the
unlikely event you go first.....you know what I want..)
Bruce Mercer
Hell, a lot of weekends I'm not even in
> bed by the time these auctions start. :)
>
> --
> Tim Mullen
Whipersnapper!
:-)
...oh for the day.............................
Tim Mullen
>Didn't need to. I've already taken steps involving certain items in my
>collection. Just make sure I always have your current address. (And in the
>unlikely event you go first.....you know what I want..)
You got it!
Tim Mullen
>Whipersnapper!
Nah, I'm getting more sedate in my old age. I was in bed by
sunrise last weekend! :)