[Milsurplus] "Oldtimer bitching"? Or Timely Warning? You Decide.

[Ray Fantini]

Warning! The following statements are all my opinion, my point of view only and are not intended as a guideline or in any way to diminish the views expressed or stated by others on this reflector. If you continue to read this please understand that central fact that I just wanted to state my divergent opinion from the general consensus.
I do not profess as to if I am right or wrong, this is just what I think.
Ray F/KA3EKH


Ever couple years this thread pops up and there is a nonstop stream of comments on how the future generations won’t care and the decreasing value or whatever.

First, if you are into antique or vintage radio or electronics as an investment or a retirement fund you’re an idiot. I often pay more for items then I end up selling them for, buying and selling is part of the chase or the fun of collecting. The opportunity to own it, get it to work and use it for a while is the best part. Sitting a radio up on a shelf and thinking about what its value will rise too has little appeal to me.

Second, “things were so much better at some mythical time in the past” what a load of crap. The hobby and when I talk about the hobby I will include other things that I am into like antique computers and aerospace equipment are stronger today than they have ever been in the past. The internet has given us the ability to display our collections with web pages, show videos of our items in use on YouTube, purchase items we would have never had the opportunity to thru EBay and last but not least share ideas and speculation amongst like-minded individuals on forums like this.
Just the effect of EBay alone is significant. I do repairs on electronics for myself and commercial clients and twenty years ago was limited to not always being able to get a direct replacement component from the local suppliers. Now with EBay I can find any part regardless if it’s an obscure early seventies field effect transistor to P MOS memory for a ROM programmer. Just enter the part number on EBay and a couple days later it’s at your door.

Third, there are more live events, nets and field operations than ever before. I was first licensed back in 1976 and have been playing around with Ham radio and military radios for the last forty years. I have regularly attended Ham fest including Dayton on more than twenty occasions and had my share of field day operations. Yes some Ham fest have died like Timonium and Gaithersburg. But Dayton is just as good now as it ever was and the like Frost fest in Richmond are events always worth attending. With all the online sales it’s natural that there would be a downturn in local ham fest. And now we have operating events at Dayton like the WW2 3885 AM net or the 510.0 Cold War net and the event at Gilbert PA with all operators using military radios or the fixed nets hosted by MRCA several times a week. The last three or four years have also seen smaller groups doing their own mill radio events like Archer Able.  In the forty years that I have been involved in the hobby this is the highest degree of Ham radio operation of military sets that I have seen. Maybe at some point back in nineteen forty or the early fifties there were a lot of Hams that used surplus for their first CW stations or things like ART-13 and BC-348 but as Ham radio evolved to SSB and better smaller commercial radios came on the market and that was the end of that. I somehow think it’s a false logic to assume that the average Ham who just wants to get on the air and talk is going to prefer huge heavy surplus gear over state of the art modern equipment, and further that anyone reading this is not that average Ham.
The last couple years I have been pouring money and labor into my M151A1 with its various radios including the huge AN/GRC-106 set up and yes I can buy an off the shelf Ham transceiver that’s smaller, uses less power and would be better for general Hamming around but that’s not what we are all doing this for is it? Like everything else if you have to ask why then you won’t understand, and that’s the appeal of the radio mutt project.

Forth, and final rant. I have seen no evidence of the bottom dropping out of the market for any technological item of significance. If you have examples of anything that’s both rare and in good condition it will always have some value. At least that’s been my experience. Not counting examples of where people have no knowledge of the value of an item and unrealistic expectations I have not seen this sudden drop in value on things like R-390 receivers or anything Collins and in a lot of the vintage computer world things like any of the old DEC PDP-hardware is now going for record prices, way beyond just three or four years ago. It’s true that things like your old Packard Bell P166 is not worth anything but there were millions of them built so what do you expect?

So like every time before I have weighed in on the “Sky is falling” and that what we are all doing is thru and if indeed you are worried about what happens with your collection when you’re gone then start selling it. There have never been better opportunities to sell this stuff then today. I know firsthand because I sell all the time on EBay, Dayton, Frost Fest and a lot of other places including here, but remember that things are only worth what people are willing to pay!

An Afterthought, I see that this is copied to both Milsurplus and the ARC-5 list. I am not now nor have I ever been on the ARC-5 list thinking the people over there obsess over just one small family of radios and indeed maybe for them the end is near! That family of radios went obsolete like seventy years ago and was only in production for ten years at best? Not disrespecting that family of radios but beyond a point there is only so much there is to see and know about it.
But that’s just my opinion and everybody knows what opinions are like!

Ray F/KA3KH
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