[Boatanchors] Got any of these in your basement?

[Mack Rogers]

This is one of those rare instances when it is good to be an old geezer that was around for the bargain basement tube prices of the old hamfests.

Yessir, it was a sweet time in history BUT the hamfest prices were not the best to be had by any means. I scored my best tube buys by offering to empty the entire tube stocks in the older distributors, supply and service houses. Those could yield thousands of tubes at a time with average per tube prices in the 10-50 cent range. Some of those could be a bit heavy on the tube types and filament voltages we seldom use but still a great deal. Anybody need about 250 NOS NIB 2C39s??? LOL!!!

Best deal ever was a large and old distributor/wholesaler in Nashville, TN. One side of the whole warehouse shelving was all tubes and almost all of the types hams and audiophools use. Best of all the guy disposing of the stock didn't even want to count 'em, he just counted one shelf and multiplied it by the number of shelf sections (he was wayyyy short). Average price per tube came out at about 6 cents each. The guy referred to one huge section of 6B4Gs as "those old regulator tubes", thank you LORD!!!

I alternately love and hate the massive buying and prices paid by the Orientals, like everything in life it's double edged sword. A friend and I hauled a load of Collins tagged studio gear to the Dayton Hamvention one year. The first piece that moved was an old turntable at more than we thought we'd get for the whole load. All of it sold to Orientals and we were happy campers. To my knowledge Collins never manufactured any of it, done under contract by others.

And then it didn't hurt to be a Bell/AT&T employee at the right time in history either. Tube lockers full of WE tubes that needed to go, somebody had to clear that old junk out!!! LOL!!!

N4VGB
Mack Rogers