Proud New Owner of A Pile of Dusty Radios

[toxcrusadr]

A cousin of my wife told me at a family reunion a couple months ago that he was doing some work for a nice old lady who had a ton of radios in her basement. She was trying to unload things since her husband and passed on some time back (he was a bit of a hoarder, but a neat one). She couldn't go down in her basement anymore and would probably just let me have whatever I wanted. He sent me a couple picks and it turned out to be a collection of late model plastics. There were a bunch of SS junkers and I left probably over half of them to get donated (I did haul em out of the basement for her). The husband was a big garage saler, apparently.

I basically grabbed anything with tubes. I've dusted them off and have to figure out how to display at least some of them. Here's a few crappy cell phone pics.




There are a couple of Halli tubers (one is a 120) and a SS Halli (WR-4 or some such) that seemed real heavy so I grabbed it. A lot of garden variety kitchen radios and clock radios but some of them are cool looking. 50s-60s kitsch. I haven't really collected this era of radios - closest I've come is Bakelites, and none of those here either. But I may have saved them from a sad fate (her kids didn't want them) and there are a few treasures. I insisted she take some money, and it wasn't very much, considering.

Thought you'd get a kick out of this one: it's a Lloyds!



Probably the most valuable is a Zenith Royal 500 pocket transistor with a perfect leather case. Apparently there were multiple models from '55-'65 but this one is just a "500" and says "Tubeless - All Transistor" so I'm thinking it might be the first edition? Gotta do some research.



All in all, a great day, and Mrs. Tox even helped unload them and said which ones she liked.