Over the years Radio Retro have received several questions asking what their radio, amplifier or vintage item is worth.

Many others have offered items for sale or asked if the items featured are available to buy. I set up Radio Retro over ten years ago as way to share knowledge and show it’s possible to repair vintage electronics and not throw it away.

Adding a shop front to sell unwanted items and pay for the site’s upkeep has been considered. Like all these endeavours time is the limiting factor and there have always been high priority things on the Trello Kanban to do list!

As to the value of your pristine Bang and Olufsen Beolit 600 or your refurbished Roberts R250 I can only offer the simple advice that — it’s worth what someone’s prepared to pay. The more people you can attract at a time the better! But, and there’s always a but, when you need to find a buyer they can be as elusive as hen’s teeth unless the item is a rarity.

Few pieces on Radio Retro are a rarity and highly valued, although these vintage items are becoming harder to find in good condition and fully working. Electronic components do ‘ware’ out and need replacing. Servicing a radio or tape recorder is a little like servicing a vintage car – both the mechanical and electrical components need attention or they will surely fail.

Running Radio Retro as a non-commercial enterprise allows me to focus on keeping the vintage kit working and passing it or the knowledge on. I’d rather give away an item to a new owner that will take care of it than sell it as a fashion item to end up in landfill when the next big thing comes along. Of course this enterprise needs sustenance and self sustaining income is important to keep it running. Storycase kindly run the website and keep it up-to-date which is much appreciated.

Repair cafes

Here in the UK the BBC’s series Repair Shop has won the hearts and minds of many likeminded people kindling the idea that cherished items have stories to tell and their owner’s are really just caretakers for a while.

Repair cafes have also become increasingly popular. A local church, St Lawrence’s (find on Facebook) run a series of monthly events for local residents to bring along items for repair. These have been well attended and hopefully once Covid restrictions are eased they will restart in the New Year.

With environmental issues becoming higher priority it’s worth considering the impact of spending the time on repair rather than endless consumption. The polluter pays principle will prevail and manufacturers are already having to pay for creating products and consider their whole lifecycle rather than pile it high and sell it cheap and ignore the consequences.

What’s worth collecting?

So if you want to begin mopping up vintage electronics and try some restoration of your own here are some places to start. Look at what the Design Museum, V&A and New York’s Museum of Modern Art MOMA have in their tech retro collections. Professional curators have the eye and give you a head start in sorting wheat from chaff.

Good design is important and there’s not really much fun in collecting items that you dislike unless you simply want to seek rarity and restore it for profit. Good design does not necessary mean designer goods. I must confess I usually avoid designer products as they are usually driven by fashion and fad and offer little substance. There are of course exceptions — true product designers such as Dieter Rams, Arne Jacobsen,  Jacob Jensen and David  Lewis (links profile collections at MOMA) and many others that have not received the recognition they deserve.

You may choose to include Jony Ive as well but I’d argue Dieter Rams has been more influential and designed more products that are worth collecting than the retro tech Apple have produced from Ive’s designs. After all, the iPod was based on Braun’s T3 transistor radio, designed by Rams in 1958. And Apple kit is not designed to be repaired. How any manufacturer could decide to glue lithium batteries into their products making replacement near impossible is to me a sin.

During lockdown in early April I found a 7 year old MacBook Pro had split its case due to lithium battery failure. I’d charged the laptop a few weeks earlier and just happened to notice it not longer sat flat on my desk. I removed the base plate, held in place by many small screws requiring a special micro screw bit, to find two of the lithium cells had malfunctioned and expanded. The base plate was deformed by the pressure and luckily not overheated and caught fire.

What to do – how could I dispose of the dangerous laptop? The local recycling centre that handles WEEE waste was closed due to lockdown. Apple stores were also closed. Manufactures have a duty to recycle waste batteries and in this case the whole laptop as the cells were glued into the aluminium housing. I called Apple support to see what they could suggest and the best they could offer was to place the laptop somewhere outside the house to remove the danger of fire. But lithium and water are explosive so it had to be somewhere dry.

Had the MacBook Pro been designed to allow removal of the lithium cells I could have continued to use the laptop. But now I had to dump it outside, hoping it would not catch fire. A similar fate could await all the Apple products, such as iPods, iPhones, etc, with lithium batteries built in that can’t be safely removed by their owners. These products are potentially time bombs and I would not recommend they be collected and stored unless the batteries are first professionally removed. Same is true for manufacturers other than Apple with lithium battery cells owners can’t remove themselves but I expected better from Apple who seek to profit over eco responsibility in my opinion.

Products and marks to consider

Radios

Iconic Roberts transistor radio from the 1970s

The humble portable radio or Transistor as they became known in the sixties, is an obvious choice. Millions have been produced so there’s no shortage of examples. They are reasonably small and can still be used to receive sport, talk and music programmes from around the world. Credit to the late Nicolas Parsons for the last phrase – he collected clocks as I recall.

Valve radios are typically larger and heavier but those encased in Bakelite such as Alba’s Midget are sought after especially the colourful ones in art deco style. Repair of valve or tube radios requires some care. The higher voltages required to operate valve circuits are dangerous to touch and some components run at high enough temperature to burn.

Alba Midget C112 valve radio

Alba Midget C112 valve radio from the late 1940s

Valve radios do have a warm sound and coupled with a larger speaker than many transistor equivalents ensure they will always be some demand. Valve radios have larger components so can be easier to replace as they age. A limitation of many valve radios built before 1950s is they will only receive AM stations broadcast on medium or long wave and sometimes short wave.

Transistor radios started to replace valve counterparts in the mid 1950s and in my mind the best examples are from 1960s to early 70s. Very high frequency (VHF) brought the luxury of frequency modulation or FM with far better quality and later enabled stereo broadcasts in high fidelity. The best transistor radios offered all four bands — LW, MW, SW and VHF and are often the most desirable.

One thing to look out for is the FM frequency range. Early FM radios were limited to 88 to 102 MHz as the public service bands used the higher frequencies. So if you can’t find Magic or Heart FM on your old transistor radio it may be out of its range. Look for 88 to 108 MHz if you want to pull in all the stations.

You will find many examples of transistor radios here on Radio Retro but the manufactures to look for include: Ever Ready Tandberg, Grundig, Hacker, B&O, Sony and Roberts Radio. You may guess my favourite are the B&O’s Beolit 400 series. In terms of aesthetics and performance its difficult to beat but not everyone’s cup of tea. Subjectivity is key so look for what you like and pick something readily available and ideally discrete transistor to start a restoration project before spending too much time and money if it does not work out.

National Panasonic Toot-a-Loop R-72S

Panasonic Toot-a-Loop R-72S transistor radio

HiFi Equipment

I grew up in the 1970s when the Audio Fair at Olympia  (see British Movietone News – Youtube) drew huge crowds ready to be taken in my the wonders of high-fidelity audio. There was an explosion of new manufactures and the Japanese giants like Technics, Pioneer, JVC, Hitachi and Sony flooded the market with discrete shiny boxes. It was undeniably a numbers game. Power output was increased with each new model as the THD (total harmonic distortion) hopefully decreased. Turntables attained every decreasing wow and flutter. Phono cartridges required less and less weight to extract higher fidelity sound.

There are many examples of amplifiers, tuners and turntables worth preserving from this era. With the resurgence of vinyl records many of the systems sold during the 1970s and 80s can be used today.

Turntables

Some turntables to look for: Linn Sondek LP12, Pioneer PL 12D, Thornes TD-124, Rega Planar 3, most anything Braun, Bang and Olufsen Beogram and Garrard 301. Research the models carefully as some manufacturers produced budget ranges, like Garrard, that offer only nostalgic value and sound pretty awful. Turntables can be easy restoration projects requiring a simple change of belt, main bearing cleaning and lubrication and sometimes replacement of the mains lead. Tone arms and cartridges (stylus) often are worn and can be replaced at some cost. Bang and Olusen’s tangental tracking turntables are my favourite as they offer some challenges in restoration due to the electronic circuitry required. They are easy to use and offer remote control track selection that you will never achieve with a Linn Sondek. You may be lucky enough to find some esoteric turntables like the Pink Triangle or Glass Daemon which only requires a light dusting.

Rega Planar 3 R200 Tonearm Ortofon MC100

Rega Planar 3 R200 Tonearm Ortofon MC100

Amplifiers

So many amplifiers and stereo systems were produced but those of note include Naim Audio, A & R, Quad 303 power and 33 pre-amplifier along with Bang and Olufsen’s Beomaster ranges with solid aluminium panels designed by Jacob Jenssen. The Japanese giants market dominance ended some British and European manufacturers efforts but the Japanese produced well engineered systems with separate power and pre amplifiers. Hitachi were surprisingly good at top of the range kit and is still sought after as is JVC, Technics and Sansui. Google vintage hifi amplifier and you will find many pundits and options to choose. Amps can suffer from electrolytic capacitor failure after 30+ years and capacitor kits are available for some popular models. Blindly replacing all the caps is an easier approach than fault finding to component level but can be a waste of time and money.

B&O Beomaster 3000-1 tuner amplifier

Tape decks

Nostalgic tape decks make a statement with their metal reels and illuminated VU meters. Running at 7.5 ips the playback quality of a reel to reel machine is far superior to the audio cassette that replaced them. Most good quality machines were built to last and can be restored by cleaning and belt replacement. Parts can be expensive for the Swiss and German machines here in the UK. Watch out for decks that have been dropped. Any dents or damage to corners or twisted platters are best avoided unless you have a good workshop and tools to dismantle. These machines are heavy and difficult to repair when damaged.

Look out for Revox A77, Teac, Technics RS range, Akai GX series, Uher, B&O Beocord, Braun. There’s an interesting history for these manufacturers such as Akai in the Museum of Magnetic Sound Recording.

Beocord 1200 Tape recorder

Beocord 1200 Tape recorder

Cassette decks and players

After the compact disk ousted the cassette as a music media, the cassette tape and its players have regained in popularity.  Vintage Sony Walkmans command three figure sums as do their professional quality variants. Portable cassette players, like the transistor radio, are easy to collect and nice examples from the 80s are in demand. They will often need replacement belts that are relatively easy to find, if fiddly to change. Worth considering if dexterity is your thing.

I would avoid Sony and look for the metal clad JVC and Panasonic players and recorders that can still be found and I think will increase in value. So many mid range plastic Sony Walkmans were produced that means value will always remain low although they are a good way to learn how to restore at modest cost.

Other system cassette decks to look out for include Tandberg, Nakamichi 3 head decks, Studer / Bang & Olusen and Yahama.

Loud Speakers

Although passive speakers are much less complex than other hifi components they can be the most difficult to choose for restoration projects. Rogers and Splendor produced the BBC’s reference quality monitor speakers that command high prices and often sought after. I would not bother with them as there are much better speakers available. Rogers, for example produced a Studio 1 for consumer and semi professional use that has a far better frequency response and power handling.

Loudspeaker woofers often suffer from ‘foam rot’ where the surround disintegrates leaving holes around the edge of the cone. This looks bad and can be a good thing if you are looking for a restoration project. Replacement rubber or foam speaker rings or surrounds are available in most of the standard sizes. See Paradigm PDR10 Foam Rot Replacement Sub Woofer Fix or other posts for details on how to fix these problems.

Some speakers to look out for from the 1970s and early 80s include Celestion Ditton series, B&O Beovox, B&W, KEF reference, Mission, Rogers Studio series, Spendor BC series, Videoton Minimax, Wharfedale Diamond series. There are many others but I’d avoid all the retro Japanese offerings except some from Yamaha. Japanese loudspeakers from the 1970-80s never sounded good compared to western ones. Generally the heavier the enclosures the better!

Videoton Minimax bookshelf speakers

Other hifi kit

You can also find a myriad of graphic equalisers, quadrophonic amplifiers, monster speaker cable, compressors, companders, Dolby 5.1 processors and other paraphernalia that will appeal to some collectors. I would not bother with these.

How much is it worth? Please add your thoughts!