[Scan-DC] [OT] Old Scanner Day at Yard Sale and Thrift Store

[Doug Kitchener]

Never hurts to look, and doesn't hurt to negotiate either... I suspect that people who aren't familiar with the whole rebanding thing (or the scanner hobby, for that matter) may tend to have an inflated view of older equipment... and may not care to be informed that it's obsolete for whatever reason... perhaps a suspicion that it's a ploy to get the price down!

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> From: b_thom at juno.com
> Date: Sat, 8 Oct 2011 20:35:21 +0000
> To: Scan-DC at mailman.qth.net
> Subject: [Scan-DC] [OT] Old Scanner Day at Yard Sale and Thrift Store
>
> I went by a yard sale today in Alexandria. There was a Radio Shack scanner there, a PRO-30, sitting next to a 1986 edition of Police Call. The scanner had a date code of 9A5, meaning it was built in September 1985. The wall wart was there, and it looked clean. The guy wanted $10 for it. His mom (I guess) added that her husband had been a DC police officer, and he used to listen to the DC police on it.
>
> Well, maybe you could back in 1986, but I don't think you can now. A PRO-30 has a whopping 16 channels. It can't go past 512 MHz, and it requires three watch cells to maintain memory. I figure that every scanner is a weather radio. Even if I chose not to install the memory cells, the radio could find a weather station. The cells alone would be a few dollars apiece, and they would require regular replacement. $10 is about ten times what I had in mind to pay for it, and we were unable to come to terms, even after he cut the price in half. I left empty-handed.
>
> At a thrift store later that afternoon, I saw that someone had turned in a Bearcat 100. This Bearcat 100 was not the 100-channel radio, but, like the PRO-30, a 16-channel radio. Also, like the PRO-30, it was the size of a brick. It had not been priced yet, and I didn't ask. Sitting next to it in a box was a Radio Shack general coverage radio. "It's a DX-394," I was sure. Nope. It was a DX-100, a considerably less interesting radio. I plugged it in and searched the bands. Nothing. It couldn't even get WMAL. I left it and the Uniden at the store.
>
> I went 0-for-3 today. I don't think I made a mistake.

(snip)