[Jeffhs]

I wonder what the seller meant when he said he couldn't test the receiver beyond plugging it in and seeing that it powers on and the clock works because he "doesn't have the experience", etc. to test it further than that. How much experience is necessary to connect a piece of wire to the antenna terminal and check for reception on at least one band? I could see his reluctance to test it if there were some sort of problem with the line cord (e.g. dry rotted) or a short in the power supply that would blow a fuse or worse (the so-called "smoke test"), but if he is willing to test it as far as seeing that it powers up and that the clock is in working condition, I would have thought he would have been ready to find out if it received signals, if nothing else. Heck, he wouldn't have had to connect a wire to the antenna terminal; if there was at least one reasonably strong AM broadcast station in his area, a finger on the terminal would likely bring in enough of a signal to prove that the set worked at least that well.

The condition of the receiver could have been a factor as well. The seller may have thought that, since it looked so terrible from the outside, there may have been who only knows what internal damage to the chassis (corrosion, etc.) so rather than risk causing even more damage or starting a fire, he may well have decided just to run the basic power-on test and leave it at that. I've seen many ebay listings which stated that an old radio, TV, etc. being offered for auction has only been tested this far as well, because the owner was afraid of getting shocked from a dry-rotted cord or a hot chassis. Without knowing the seller or his circumstances, not to mention how much knowledge of electronics he may or may not have, it is almost impossible to know why he stopped where he did as far as his testing of the set was concerned.