No Good Deals Anymore

I used to be able to find good deals on Ebay. I found a Dynakit with tubes and a good PT for $150 a couple of years ago. I won a SE reel to real tube amp with both transformers, three good tubes and a workable chassis for $35. I also bought a 1950's McGraw Hill tube kit for "future engineers" still in the box for $15.

It seems like those days are gone, even though they were only a couple of years ago. Are there any bargains out there anymore??

Kaner, please accept my apologies for joining your violin solo, but you are right. Good deals with nice folks on Flea Bay and Audio Goner are few and far between anymore. I collect clocks as well, and those markets dried up long before the audio market began to get stinking greedy. You'll pay 10 large for a large-case Chelsea ship's clock now that used to go begging for $800 a few years ago. It's basic market math -- too many more people chasing a fixed supply of no-longer made good stuff.
Canuck Audio Mart still has some decent folks, though I'm sure it has its share of hustlers, too. I have found several honest, reliable sellers there that you won't find on the glitzy sites. It's also a matter of building relationships on sites such as this, people who are serious hobbyists and not just cut-and-run gunslingers. Why would Bob, Roy, Holger, McShane and the rest of the lot basically give their gear away, parts & labour all in, except they want you to have some of the fun they've had with this antique stuff?
Good guys still exist. They're just not on Fleabay or AudiogoNer any more.

Happens to any hobby like this after it gets "popular". Too many hobbyists people chasing too few pieces, as stated above. Then the flippers show up and really pound the nail in the coffin.

Yep, Skreifal, people with no passion for the hobby jump in and start flipping stuff the value of which they've no concept. I am encouraged by the collapse of the tulip market. Hustlers eventually get their due.

Dynamania!!!

The sad thing is that lots of people buys old amps, changes them by the phase of-the-moon, using
a kerosene-heated screwdriver as soldering tool. In effect destroy a perfectly working amp.

When asked for i use to tell people when they ask for "how to rebuild my xxx" i answer :
don't. Buy a latino amp, and sell you unmolested xxx . For a while you have both to compare,
and the net cost is usually less then the cost of all addons, tubes, kerosene and bills from the
amp-repairman.

But no-one listens :-(

peterh,
Greetings from the wilds of northern Idaho in the USA. We are a dozen time zones apart.
I hope others will accept your advice. You can drive yourself crazy with ancient tube gear. First, a capacitor goes south, then a resistor or two lay an egg, then you're scratching your head why the tubes won't bias and glow bright red and you get a buzzing feeling touching the power switch while fuses fly out the back and many other parts cascade in failure.
I would love to have my old Heathkits and Collins s-lines up and running but would rather spend the time listening to good music.
Bob L. and Roy M. have taken us to the next level with VTA. They have taken David Hafler's timeless designs and brought them up to speed with far better components and some very sensible circuitry tweaks that were not possible with what Hafler had in the 1950s. Tubes are plentiful and the VTA interior components are bullet-proof. Starting from scratch with their kits will save you a lot of grief and give you a great deal of pleasure. Your grandchildren will still be tube-swapping on them.

I've found an alarming trend among turntable listings on EBay.  With the renaissance of the LP record, there is increasing interest in machines to play them on, once the "new converts" get past the Crosley Junk category.  Greedy EBay sellers will now list anything and everything that is capable of playing records at exhorbitantly high prices.  But record players...face it...are heavy and expensive (and RISKY) to ship.  So shipping costs are also high.  The result?  THEY DON'T SELL.

Now this might be OK for the BSR minichangers that cost about $30 to begin with and aren't a whole lot better than the Crosley Junk.  But Dual, Garrard, Miracord record changers and decent mid-fi turntables such as Technics...they are another matter.  The greedy EBay sellers reason, after they don't sell at the too-high price, "Maybe I should take them apart and sell them as PARTS! After all, a 2013 Blitzkrieg 375i Sport is worth more as parts than as a complete car."  So they rip into them and list them piecemeal, usually with no logic as to what should sell with what, to an audience who isn't trying to find parts anyway (and who wouldn't have the smarts to fix a record changer even if they had to).  The result is perfectly rebuildable equipment that is being trashed...and then the parts get trashed, too.

GP49 wrote:I've found an alarming trend among turntable listings on EBay.  With the renaissance of the LP record, there is increasing interest in machines to play them on, once the "new converts" get past the Crosley Junk category.  Greedy EBay sellers will now list anything and everything that is capable of playing records at exhorbitantly high prices.  But record players...face it...are heavy and expensive (and RISKY) to ship.  So shipping costs are also high.  The result?  THEY DON'T SELL.

Now this might be OK for the BSR minichangers that cost about $30 to begin with and aren't a whole lot better than the Crosley Junk.  But Dual, Garrard, Miracord record changers and decent mid-fi turntables such as Technics...they are another matter.  The greedy EBay sellers reason, after they don't sell at the too-high price, "Maybe I should take them apart and sell them as PARTS! After all, a 2013 Blitzkrieg 375i Sport is worth more as parts than as a complete car."  So they rip into them and list them piecemeal, usually with no logic as to what should sell with what, to an audience who isn't trying to find parts anyway (and who wouldn't have the smarts to fix a record changer even if they had to).  The result is perfectly rebuildable equipment that is being trashed...and then the parts get trashed, too.

We drove 350km by car to denmark when i bought my thorens.
I did not want someone to send it by any mail/agent as it might be an expensive
pile of junk when it arrived. Even if the original boxes are available few people know
how to install transport security devices ( screws etc) .

There is a very decent and competent Thorens guy here in the US, also restores AR tables. Surf to http://vinylnirvana.com/

Chelsea clocks? I have a Chelsea clock and barometer set from 20 years ago. Is it worth something? Yeah I used to get deals on my plethora of hobbies all the time. Bamboo fly rods, Hemingway first additions, vacuum tubes and amps, guitars. Even Craigslist has become expensive.

Local flee markets, thrift shops and garage sales are all that's left, but I'm not willing to pick through hangers of Garanimals for the occasional good find.

So how willing are you to sell all your vintage stuff for the "bargain" prices you seek?

Exactly! Every "good deal" has a sucker for a seller. Few of us would volunteer to pay "fair price" for a garage sale find being sold for pennies! Therefore it's hard to get upset when people ask for and get what the market will bear. I think it's just another variation of "I remember when gas was 32 cents a gallon"!

kaner wrote:Chelsea clocks?  I have a Chelsea clock and barometer set from 20 years ago.  Is it worth something?  Yeah I used to get deals on my plethora of hobbies all the time. Bamboo fly rods, Hemingway first additions, vacuum tubes and amps, guitars.  Even Craigslist has become expensive.  

Local flee markets, thrift shops and garage sales are all that's left, but I'm not willing to pick through hangers of Garanimals for the occasional good find.

You can't even FIND a decent Chelsea on Fleabay anymore, at least with American guts in the clock. The baros have always been French, at least back as far as my 1910 desktop set goes. As Ian Hunter sang, "All the good ones are taken." I've got a couple others (Chelseas) including a WW2 radio-room clock and "Big Bertha," a 10-inch striker from 1939 that is factory chrome-plated, all with factory provenance. Would I sell 'em for what I paid for 'em? In your dreams.
Vinyl is about the only thing still worth scavenging for, but yes, you've got a lot of kewpie dolls to plough through.
Fleabay has been the great equalizer. It created a pricing mechanism where none existed before, making life miserable for we cheapskates... Antique Dynas, Macs, Heaths and Citations at a "decent" price are - sob - gone the way of the dodo bird. Such is life.

Hey kaner,

Is this anything like the McGraw Hill tube kit you got:

http://www.shopgoodwill.com/auctions/Lab-Volt-Student-Experience-502A-BasicElectronics-21985724.html

I forgot about it until today, but at $9.00 (not including the $33.43 shipping and $3.50 handling) it's not to shabby a deal.  Predates my electronics training by about a decade or two...

Tony

No but that looks like a pretty good deal! The kit I bought was the parts and plans for an "Eight Watt HI FI Amplifier". Push pull, mono. I did build it pretty much according to the schematic. I used modern resistors & caps but otherwise stuck mostly to the original design, point to point. Not a lot of power but very clean, pleasant sound. I use it in my workroom.

The box says McGraw-Hill Inc. Eight Watt Amplifier 55704 Project Materials, Copyright 1967 by Science Electronics division of General Electronic Laboratories, Incorporated

If I can chime in..

Television and it's hyped up overinflated prices have not helped the collectible market.

Shows like Pawn Stars. American Pickers, American Restoration to name a few. Oh and let's not forget the auto auction shows!

These programs are way off base when it comes to valuing some of the things they show.

For instance there was a Pawn Stars episode where a guy brings in a pinball machine that isn't worth $200 in the real world (I'm a pinball collector also) and the boobs on PS pay over $1200 for it..

The average public sees this and thinks that old clock that granny gave them is now worth a fortune.. that their piece of junk pinball is worth a small fortune or that their Lionel Scout engine is priceless since it is heavy.

As to our audio equipment more than likely the interest from the asian countries in our tube audio hasn't helped the collectors market. I bought a Rek-O-Kut B-12H a few years back that was mounted on a board with a Gray Tonearm.. the whole get up was $175 dollars. I sold the Gray Tonearm on Ebay where an asian "agent" for a collector bid it all the way up to $1400 dollars.
(this is what it looked like before.. and after)


The deals are out there, just fewer and farther between.

I bought an Acoustic Research Tuner at a garage sale for $8, and promptly sold it on ebay for $275....

My son just moved into his first apartment, and was asking me if a stereo is outta the question as a housewarming / early Christmas gift.

I have spare pre amp amd speakers, so checked evilBay for dynacos-- i foumd the same as you lot. Some high miler was available for 600. About the same cost as a VTA 70 without tubes!

If I can swing it, I'm thinking this fall/winter will be my time to upgrade to the mono blocks, and I'll pass along my vta 70 to warm the kid's apartment. But I'm keeping my GL kt88's.

Seriously, unless you're a collector, market trends make the modern Renditions of the classic Dyna a no brainer.

Seems to me this is a pretty damn good deal, though not quite the steal most of y'all would like.

http://www.usaudiomart.com/details/649215900-custom-build-aikido-5814a-12au7a-tube-preamplifier/

I own an SP13 with a PH12 phono board that Troy built (which I *LOVE* by the way). This piece looks like the kind of workmanship that Troy would have done. Very sweet.

deepee99 wrote:Yep, Skreifal, people with no passion for the hobby jump in and start flipping stuff the value of which they've no concept.

Nicely put. Times have changed over the last few years: I used to buy on eBay..... now I only look very occasionally, and when I do it's depressing: 95% junk, and the other 5% utterly overpriced. So much greed, and most of it IMHO comes from people who have no idea about the gear they're selling: people flipping from yard sales, estate sales, goodwill stores...... I'm just starting on the restoration of an ST-70, and if a friend hadn't kindly given it to me, there's NO WAY I'd have been able to afford it, even in the terrible condition it's in.

Oh well, maybe things will change again.....in the meantime, I'm happy with my ST-70

Now, if only I could find a nice original PAT-4......

Pat R. wrote:
Television and it's hyped up overinflated prices have not helped the collectible market.

Shows like Pawn Stars. American Pickers, American Restoration to name a few. Oh and let's not forget the auto auction shows!

These programs are way off base when it comes to valuing some of the things they show.

Absolutely.  Not only are many of these shows likely to be at least partially staged/fake (like most "reality" shows), but they make viewers believe that "OMG!  I can do that.  Ka-Ching!" ('Cept of course, they usually can't.)

Doc, Dale here; I have an original Pat 4 (assume you're saying Dynaco SS Pat 4) ; PM me if you like. Just got a mint Pat 5 BiFet as a replacement. Not that I'm a seller, just being helpful. Good day.