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Old 12th Jun 2012, 9:02 pm   #21
Tractorfan
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Smile Re: Best find or buy

Hi,
A cream DAC90A, practically mint, and an 'Osram "Four" New Music Magnet' from a chap who saw my vintage radio collection at a steam rally in Cheshire. Also a nice HMV 857 from another show visitor who was going to dump it in the tip if I didn't take it. Well, it would have been rude not to.
A local retailer in my home town gave me four boxes of NOS valves many years ago, which I finally sold to a radio renovation business in Manchester for £100 plus a 'GramDeck' deck! (I had the electronics, but not the transport).
My Beloved hates sending me to the bins at the edge of our village as I usually have a little rummage. She soon changed her tune when I returned one day with a brand new food processor/blender with the attachments in its box that had been dumped there. It mixes lovely cakes!
Cheers, Pete
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Old 13th Jun 2012, 1:39 am   #22
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Default Re: Best find or buy

Accepting the offer to help myself to anything from what was left behind when Marconi Marine training department relocated from the Waterhouse Lane site where I was based at the time: thousands of passive components, dozens of drums of wire and cables, a synthesised Marconi RF, and some assorted low frequency, signal generators, a scope, a Farnell 2A 30V power supply, a recording multimeter, and one of Marconi's last morse keys. There was also the remains of a set of ancient christmas tree lights with enough good 20V bulbs to get my old set working again plus some spares! Oh, and a complete set of the Radiation Lab Microwave handbooks.
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Old 13th Jun 2012, 7:53 am   #23
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Default Re: Best find or buy

good morning,

I bought an Audiolab 8000A amplifier for £2.50 from the Rugby reuse recycle centre at the local tip a few weeks ago when I went there to buy some recycled compost .

A dry joint on the volume pot was quickly found and rectified and it works perfectly. My dad paid a huge amount for a new one many years ago.

Christopher Capener
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Old 13th Jun 2012, 9:09 am   #24
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Default Re: Best find or buy

I found two radiogram chassis for £5. One had a pair of PX4's within!

A white Hacker Sovereign II (filthy) for change

A Hacker Super Sovereign for £7

Everything is out there - you just need luck/persistance to find it


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Old 13th Jun 2012, 12:43 pm   #25
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Default Re: Best find or buy

Two years ago I was given an AVO 8. Excellent condition - a bit of corrosion on the battery connections - and it came in its box.
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Old 13th Jun 2012, 2:41 pm   #26
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Default Re: Best find or buy

Best this year has to be an SME headshell complete with Shure V15 cartridge in original box, bought for 20p at the local car boot.
Neil
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Old 13th Jun 2012, 7:06 pm   #27
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Default Re: Best find or buy

On the hi-fi front, not as good as HVH's Audiolab bargain, but a Rega Planar 2 at last years NVCF for £20, complete with the earlier 'S' shape tonearm.

A good clean and a cartridge and out came my old vinyl!

Greg
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Old 13th Jun 2012, 8:10 pm   #28
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Default Re: Best find or buy

At the college where I used to work I found a mint Advance J2 in a skip in the car park! I gave it away to an ebay buyer who had just bought my old Telequipment D53A - for £25

Also rescued from there was an immaculate Uher SG-562 Royal, which only needed the idler wheel replacing, which luckily I didn't give away!
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Old 13th Jun 2012, 9:10 pm   #29
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All sorts of things ... on the way to school once, 68 ish and about 12 yrs old, I spotted a valve through a broken factory cellar window. looked at it for days. Eventually on my knees, just managed to reach ... I still have it, a Cossor triode, it works, and is in my Davenset.
Quad and Rogers amps from the local tip scrap metal bin (no more).
Maybe five years ago, an RGD console, late 40's, left outside in the rain. Just managed to stuff it into my 2CV. Sold to pay for MOT.
An HRO and dog kennel, at the end of my street, from a postcard in the local Tesco. had to pay £50 though
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Old 13th Jun 2012, 11:08 pm   #30
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A pair of HP 478 thermistor mounts, brand new in NATO bag in box in bag packaging for 50p a the Kelso rally in the late 80's. They're sensor heads (10uW to 10mW over 10MHz to 10GHz) for an RF/microwave power meter.

And a pair of NOS boxed KT88s for another 50p at a junk sale. (British ones from long before they started putting little lions on them)

David
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Old 14th Jun 2012, 7:45 am   #31
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Default Re: Best find or buy

I have had a number of great bargains over the past few years. Got an R1155 on a car boot sale for £15. It didn't work, but eventually, I got the receiver up to 100% function again. Didn't bother with the DF section. This involved fitting a 6V6 output valve in it in an ex DF valve socket and making an external power unit. Then cleaned it up physically until it was rather magnificent. Then lost interest in it and sold it on Ebay for just over £200!

Next got an ancient wooden Burndept IV for £25. I did intend to make it work again, but the circuit seemed so basic, I could' imagine much performance from it. It lay in bits in the garage for several months. Then I re-assembled it and sent it to London vintage radio auction (that I discovered by chance) where it sold for £2,400! I had no idea of its value and it came very close to being taken to the tip!

The three R valves at same boot sale for £10. Filaments all OK, but two gone on emission and third one pretty low. An American saw my pictures on the internet and offered me £150 for all three (in full knoweldge of their almost zero emission), so let them go.

Got a small Avominor, still in its box for £4 that I still use as I prefer analogue meters for some uses.

SG Brown magnetic amplifier for £10 that I sold on Ebay for £65 after cleaning up and restoring physically.

Jam jar full of 955 Acorn valves that I still use. Lots & lots of valves that I still have.

I don't buy these things specifically to sell, but either for the pleasure of making them work again and/or photographing them for future writings on the subject. Haven't the room to keep everything and it is nice to have a self-financing hobby.

Have had a few bad buys though, including an Avo 8 for £10 that looked OK, but movement burned out!

Hundreds of boxed ceramic resistors of the 1950s era, great to look at, but all gone high in value.

Bob
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Old 14th Jun 2012, 12:44 pm   #32
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A car-boot-sale Bird "43" directional wattmeter and a tray of plugins for £5. I still use it regularly when tuning up antennas/transceivers.

Beaulieu autojumble: Box of about a dozen absolutely filthy FM Pye Westminsters for £1. They all worked - cleaned up and sold them on at £10 a time to other hams in the 1980s for use as 2-metre packet-radio nodes.

Car-boot-sale: somewhat-modified (internal PSU, magic-eye) Pye PCR2 for £5. Still have it.

Farm-contractors-auction: brand new Spillsbury "Stinger" remote-tune mobile/aircraft HF antenna (apparently they bought it by mistake to communicate with crop-sprayer planes without realising we use VHF for that in the UK) - £1. These cost more like £1000 new.

Again at a car-boot sale: ex-military "Charging set 300W", complete with the "elephant's trunk" flexible remote-exhaust pipe, for a tenner. That one nearly killed me as I had to hump it a mile or so back to the car park in freezing November gales/sleet.

--G6Tanuki.
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Old 14th Jun 2012, 10:03 pm   #33
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Smile Re: Best find or buy

Hi,
Of course, it works both ways and I've often sold stuff for far less than I should have because I didn't know any different. I let some PA amps go for peanuts because I didn't realise the worth of the KT66s in one, and the KT88s in the other and the GEC EF86 equivalents in an old 'scope type instrument. Also a pair of NOS boxed PX4s for £35. Someone told me later that they could have gone for £40 EACH! How true that was, I'll never find out. Had bruised shins for ages after kicking myself!
Cheers, Pete
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Old 14th Jun 2012, 10:42 pm   #34
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£40 each would be a bargain!!

My best finds have possibly been my Lenco GL75 which was free, I knew it was a good turntable when I got it but had no idea what giant killing potential it has (and I am about to unlock). The rest of my Hi-Fi system has also been sourced very cheaply thanks to some very generous people!

Also the vast component haul I got from school when they were having a clearout was pretty good, still never have what I need though

My Bush TV63 was pretty good too, 99p to buy, £1.50 worth of capacitors and it was up and running well!
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Old 15th Jun 2012, 2:59 pm   #35
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A few years ago from a local Bric-a-brac auction, I bought a box of random electronic parts that looked like they had been cleared from a workshop. Bargain! 50p. On collecting after the auction ended, the box had multiplied into 3 boxes. The wife wasn't impressed...
All was duly dumped in my garage and left to sort out later.
A friend was with me when I later had a look what the other 2 boxes contained. They contained old Hi-fi units and a turntable. "No good to me", I thought. My friend was rather more excited and asked how much I wanted. "Give me what you think they're worth to you" I said. I would have been happy to get my 50p back but instead he thrust £200 in my hand.
It turned out the turntable was some desirable Garrard thing and the rest of the kit was Quad stuff including a preamp, tuner and 2 valve power amps.
Result! I thought I would treat the Wife to a new lawnmower with my new found wealth. I got her a 1 horsepower model. It's a bit slow, but gets the job done eventually... She loves him to bits!!
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Old 15th Jun 2012, 8:58 pm   #36
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I did get a nice bargain today, I missed the end of an auction for a Philips 341A so contacted the seller offering him £10, he said £5 was fairer. Went to collect it today and the seller said I was a nice chap so could have it for 99p and threw in an Ekco U428. In return I offered to look at the 60's transistor sets he wants to collect
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Old 6th Aug 2013, 11:38 pm   #37
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Best buy: I was 14 years old (1989) and bought 2 QUAD 2 power amps, a 22 pre amp, FM tuner, multiplex decoder, Thorens TD135 mk2 with Ortofon cartridge,all in a GNK cabinet, and a pair of Leak Sandwich speakers.... all for £40! A little later I bought A Leak stereo 20 amp and pre amp for £60. They did not work properly and sounded very disappointing.
I guess with new capacitors and resistors it would have been OK - I just bought a German amplifier instead and the Quad and Leak just gathered dust.
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Old 11th Aug 2013, 3:35 pm   #38
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At a house auction back in the early 90's I was looking through the lots that took my interest. One of which was described as an old record player in cabinet with speaker. The old record player was a Garrard 301 in mint condition with an SME 3012 arm and Decca cartridge. There was an amp in the bottom, a Leak TL50 with pre-amp! The cabinet drew no attention and most of the buyers there were after some very high quality antique furniture as it was an old country house that had been owned by a wealthy person.
When this lot came up the starting bid came down to £5, which I placed! Only one other bidder tried their luck but I got it for £15!!
I also had several other bargain buys at the same auction, the owner had many interests so I had all sorts from tools to test equipment, but because the major area of interest was furniture and fine art I had almost no bidding competition!
I eventually sold the 301, a silver hammerite version, with arm for almost £1000, the amp for £600 and alot of the other stuff for quite a sum. Really regret selling the TL50 though, it was a minter! I retained many other items though, like a very nice variac, a 30's Lucas car inspection light that looks almost new, some Heathkit stuff that had been built to a very high standard and a number of good tools.
Not many auctions like that though!
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Old 13th Aug 2013, 2:29 pm   #39
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Found a pair of tannoy lancasters dumped on the pavement...rushed home with one of them,and when returned for the other,the council van was just pulling up...That was lucky.Managed to grab another pair,with 15" golds from a local auction house,fo £280,a couple of years ago,too.
Another bargain was a pair of huge vitavox speakers,from grey mare lane market in manchester for £5.
Also found two ferrograph series 3's in a skip.Didn't rush home with those though,too heavy!!
Happy days!
steve
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Old 14th Aug 2013, 8:36 am   #40
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At a steam rally a few years back, rummaging through a box of valves on a tat stall. Amongst all the PL81s and EF80, I found a Loewe valve, which I duly purchased for 20p.
It turned out to be in perfect working order and made over £200 on ebay.

Some years before that at another rally I snaffled up eight NOS PX25's for forty quid. Suffice it to say I made a very handsome profit on them

I'm not normally so lucky, and haven't found anything comparable since!

Philip
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