Rock Star Price Guide

By Joel Thurtell, K8PSV

Okay, this one’s not for everybody. But maybe it’s not so niche-like, after all. There’s some basic economics here, regardless that the topic is ham radio. It doesn’t hurt to remind people that prices change over time and that there are ways of computing how much yesterday’s product would be worth today. That set of letters and number behind my name is my Federal Communications Commission-issued amateur radio call sign. I got my first license in June 1959, so I’ve been licensed as a ham radio operator for more than a half century. Rock star Joe Walsh of the Eagles also is a ham. His call sign is WB6ACU. The prices were computed through 2003. This article first appeared in the October 2006 issue of CQ magazine. I could re-calculate all those prices through 2008, but don’t have time. Hope you enjoy this piece — I had fun writing it.

Rock Star Price Guide

The rock star’s question made me ponder the unanswerable: What are my old radios worth?

Easy: They’re worth whatever someone will pay, right?

That’s the only sane answer.

But what fun is sanity?

The human condition demands that we dicker or bicker about prices if only to stave off boredom.

What sparked my latest run at the old radio pricing conundrum was an email from Joe Walsh, lead guitarist with the Eagles. Joe wanted to know the price of my Central Electronics 100R ham receiver.

First reaction: Sorry, Joe, it ain’t for sale.

I mean, that’s the crown jewel of my radio collection.

The Central Electronics 100R. was featured in my April 1992 Electric Radio and November 1998 QST stories and in the 1999 CQ classic radio calendar.

Central only made one.

They don’t get any more scarce.

The 100R represents the pinnacle of my collecting career.

To sell it would be, well, unthinkable.

But if the 100R were for sale, how much would I ask?

I keep telling you it’s NOT for sale!

Doesn’t anyone listen?

Including me?

Admittedly, Joe’s 100R query is a toughie: The radio never went to market, never had a price tag placed on it. It’s a prototype of a receiver meant to match the renowned Central Electronics 100-V and 200-V transmitters. Before Central could gear up production, the parent company, Zenith, closed Central.

With no price, there’s no baseline from which to extrapolate even a guesstimate of its current worth.

And even then, its very uniqueness makes it impossible to appraise.

Does this discussion seem arcane? Well, there are practical uses for present-day values with old gear.

Consider this: After UPS mangled one of my radios some years ago, I tried to file an insurance claim. How much was the radio worth? That was easy. An old catalog told me that in 1955, my Heath DX-100 sold for $189.50.

There was extensive damage. A transformer broke free and like the proverbial loose cannon sliced through ranks of glass tubes. The complete rig at its 1955 value wasn’t worth what some of its individual parts would cost today. For instance, a new Peter Dahl Co. high voltage transformer alone would set me back $205.

I needed to know how much that DX-100 was worth today.

Aside from the UPS problem, the question is interesting to me because I buy and sell old ham radios and need to price them. Since most of them need repair before I can ship them, it would be helpful to know how much money I could invest in a given rig before my costs of acquisition, labor and parts for repair, advertising, warehouse rent, utilities, local, state and federal taxes add up to more than I could get for the radio. Oh yes, and I’d like a little room for profit.

True, I could track eBay prices. But they are one-time events, representing the sale price of a radio of unknown quality and unknown cost during one short slice of time. To me, it’s useless information.

There are some half-hearted price guides. Authors of some amateur radio equipment books provide price guides, but I don’t trust them. What is their database? There is no good source for price information and I don’t sense that dealers have been asked. No author has ever asked me for a list of my selling prices. And I have another concern. Since authors often are collectors themselves, they might like to have prices appear low in hopes of keeping them that way.

So how can we objectively arrive at current price estimates for yesterday’s radios?

Why not use the manufacturer’s original price, adjusting it for inflation? The original price presumably reflected the cost of production plus some markup for profit.

In the mid-1990s, when I first posted my www.radiofinder.com website, I compiled a list of present-day values for several old radios in my inventory. I used a table of inflation factors I got from another collector. For each radio, I researched its year of manufacture and original price. My inflation factor chart gave a number that I multiplied times the past price of the radio to arrive at the 1994 value.

That was okay in 1996. But by 2003, when we re-designed the Radiofinder website, the numbers were way out of date.

But by then, the remedy was easy as google.

Call up the search engine and type “inflation calculator.”

Pages of websites will appear on your screen and they let you plug in the year of manufacture and then current price. The website does the math and up pops your present price. Today, the most recent “present” year is 2003.

One site — www.usinflationcalculator.com — will do calculations based on Consumer Price Index from 1913-2013.

What an amazing tool. Now I know that my old National HRO receiver priced at $167.70 in 1935 was worth $2,846.38 in 2013. I see that my 1955 DX-100’s $189.50 price would come in at $1,644.20 in 2003 dollars.

But it would likely be worth considerably more than that. After all, the DX-100 was a kit. The buyer was expected to contribute his labor. Add in the value of labor and you have, well, a figure considerably more than $1,644.20, though a little hard to determine.

You can get a more accurate present-day price reading by looking at a factory-made unit. Take the Collins 75A-4, popular in 1955 when it was introduced and still sought after today. It was priced at $495 in 1955.

In 2013 dollars?

$4,294.88.

But even when looking at a relatively recent classic such as the Collins-Rockwell KWM-380, the effects of overall inflation are amazing. The KWM-380 came out in 1979 priced at $2,995. In 2013, the same radio fresh from the factory would cost $9,592.70!

Try this trick on the venerable Collins KW-1, pricetag $3,850 in 1953.

In 2013?

$33,529.75

To anyone who thinks these calculations lead to outrageously high prices, consider that in 1955 not too many of us were buying 75A-4s. I dreamed of owning a 75A-4, but when I was in the market for a good ham-bands-only receiver in 1960, what did I settle for? An older 75A-2, which I could afford on my newspaper carrier’s earnings.

Indeed, one of the 75A-4s in my shack was homebrewed by a Collins technician who could not afford to buy an A-4 off the factory line. (See QST, February 2000) In other words, for many hams, $495 was as insurmountable a price in 1955 as $4,294.88 is today.

Yet that $4,294 doesn’t seem so outrageous, after all, when you consider the cost of top-of-the-line new piece of equipment. In the 2002 Amateur Electronic Supply catalog, the FT-1000-D was selling for $4,199.

Now ask yourself, when the Kenwood-Icom-Yaesu rigs are 40 years old and the 75A-4 is 90, where will the A-4 be?

Not in the landfill beside today’s rigs, I’ll bet!

But what about the 100-R? We still haven’t figured out how much Joe Walsh ought to pay me for that gem.

We can work the math just as we did for the other rigs.

The retired Zenith vice president who sold me the 100R said Central-Zenith spent $250,000 developing that one radio.

In 1961 dollars.

Let’s plug the numbers into our trusty inflation calculator, and …

The price in 2013 dollars is…

Stand back, please. One to a customer.

One million, nine hundred forty-four thousand two hundred thirty-nine dollars and thirteen cents.

In plain Arabic: $1,944,239.13

No point being picky. Let’s round it off.

Two million smackers!

Hey Joe!

Changed my mind.

Got your check book?

Basic tools for inflation calculations

To figure out those elusive current values for old gear, you’ll need some basic research tools in addition to the Internet inflation calculator.

It wouldn’t hurt to have a collection of old QST and maybe CQ magazines, because their advertisements often list prices and confirm date of manufacture.

The ARRL’s “Radio Amateur’s Handbook” during our classic period of roughly the 1930s to about 1970 had an advertisement section that gave prices.

An easier way to check those facts is to stock your library with a few handy reference works. Here are the ones I find most helpful:

“The Pocket Guide to Collins Amateur Radio Equipment, 1946 to 1990,” by Jay H. Miller, KK5IM, Trinity Graphic Systems, 1995.

“Shortwave Receivers Past & Present; Communication Receivers 1942-1997,” by Fred Osterman, Universal Radio Research, 1998.

“Tube Type Transmitter Guide; Manufactured Pre-Builts and Kits from 1922 to 1970 Using All, or Mostly Tubes,” by Eugene Rippen, Sound Values, 1995. A later edition covers 1920-1980 and is less expensive.

“Communications Receivers; The Vacuum Tube Era: 1932-1981,” by Raymond S. Moore, RSM Communications, 1987. A later edition is less expensive.

“Radios by Hallicrafters With Price Guide,” by Chuck Dachis, Schiffer Publishing,Ltd., 1996.

“The Hallicrafters Story, 1933-1975,” by Max de Henseler, Antique Radio Club of America, 1991.

“Heathkit: A Guide to the Amateur Radio Products,” by Chuck Penson, WA7ZZE, Electric Radio Press, 1995.

Rock star price chart

Maker                    Model        Year built               Original price                   2013 Price

Hammarlund         HQ-120                1938                               $117                                  $1,921.51

Hallicrafters             S-38                    1946                                   39.50                                 471.02

Central Electronics 10-A                    1953                                 159.50                               1,389.09

Hallicrafters             SX-88                 1953                                 595                                    5,181.87

Johnson                   Ranger                 1954                                329.50                             2,.848.29

Collins                       KWS-1                 1955                              1,995                                 17,309.68

Drake                        1-A                        1957                                 299                                   2,474.26

Heath                       DX-60                  1962                                   79.95                                615.59

National                  NC-303                1963                                 449                                   3,411.97

Heath                      HW-101                1970                                399.95                              2,396.93