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Old 05-05-2005, 01:47 AM
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Jeffhs Jeffhs is offline
<----Zenith C845
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Fairport Harbor, Ohio (near Lake Erie)
Posts: 4,035
Quote:
Originally Posted by Charlie
JB,

Here's a site dedicated to the zenith TO radios. Looks like this guy is selling them, but wouldn't say that his prices are market value.

http://www.grandcanyontuberadio.com/...nsoceanic1.htm
I just looked at his web site. The prices he has on those old TOs are incredible! I purchased an H500 TO, in working condition, at a hamfest 20 years ago for $25. Can't imagine this receiver going for anywhere near $250 these days. Worse yet, I saw a TO Royal 1000-1 on the same site, priced at, IIRC, $337...well over $200 in any case. I know the Royal 1000, 1000-1 (with the AC adapter modification) and 1000-D (with the 150-400 kHz LW band) were the first TransOceanics to use transistorized circuitry, but honestly...nearly $340 for a set made nearly fifty years ago? Not to mention the tube-type versions of these sets, which are also going for well over $100 on grandcanyontuberadio.com. Heck, I see these on ebay (and at hamfests) for a lot less, and many of them work as well as the sets the guy at gctr.com has. In any case, I wouldn't pay $340-$350 for a tube-operated AC/battery radio that was manufactured only a few years after I was born (1956).

I don't know what the guy at gctr.com is doing or trying to do, but, IMHO, he is pricing these old TOs far too high. If I were in the market for another TO (tube or solid state), I'd look on ebay again as I did for my first...er, second one. A person could go broke in no time flat buying radios from this fellow. One can buy a decent bookshelf stereo system (or a Bose Wave radio or radio/CD) for what he's asking for most of those tube-powered TOs on his site (I bought an Aiwa bookshelf system five years ago for just about the same price as this guy is asking for a 1955 Zenith TO, chassis 5H40). However, I guess with antique radio collectors, the price of the set doesn't matter--if he/she wants it badly enough, he/she will find a way to get it. Where there's a will there's a way, you know. But I personally would not plunge myself into debt up to my eyebrows just to get a 50-year-old radio, on ebay or elsewhere, which may or may not work, even if it was a Zenith (my favorite brand of antique radio--I have five such sets here).

One could also go broke trying to get one of these old sets repaired, if one can find a repair shop that will work on them (many if not most of today's TV technicians [not those who post here on AK, however], schooled in solid-state technology, wouldn't know what a vacuum tube is, or how to troubleshoot tube-powered circuitry). For example, the TV repair shop in the next town south of me would not even look at my 1951 Zenith H511 when I called them a couple years ago and asked for at least an estimate as to how much it would cost to get it working again. (It still works today, and well, without anything having been done to it except to replace the pilot light, but I digress.) The receptionist told me they would not so much as look at the radio, even if I brought it to them personally. However, that is beside the point. The point I am trying to make is, again, that the person who operates Grand Canyon Tube Radio in Arizona is, IMHO, pricing his 50+-year-old Zenith Trans-Oceanics far, far too high. What is it about these old sets, which often don't work well on higher frequencies and which can and all too often are blown clear out of the water by today's solid-state shortwave rigs (my Icom IC-725 ham rig has a receiver that is probably many times more sensitive than my 1958 Zenith Royal 1000-1 TO), that causes antique radio dealers such as gctr.com, et al. to price them many tens or in some cases hundreds of dollars more than they are probably worth, even fully restored? Good grief!
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Collecting, restoring and enjoying vintage Zenith radios since 2002

Zenith. Gone, but not forgotten.
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