What obscure electronic item do you collect / obsess with?

My dad collected cheap plastic flashlights. When he passed we had a yard sale. We had 2 plastic tubs fill to overflowing. We gave flashlights away free and still took a hundred or so to the thrift store
 
Quality electronics from the 90s and early 2000s made of a quality we don't see much any more; receivers, CD and DVD players, tape players, VCRs, speakers. Sony, Denon, Pioneer, Kenwood, Panasonic...

Need a way to play all my media when all the old stock is gone and nothing more new produced.
 
I have a collection of old radios. My first wife started it when she bought me a 1938 Fairbanks Morse console radio. Worked great and still does. I also have a large collection of Hallicrafter and Zenith short wave and tube AM and tube AM-FM radios. In addition to those I have a decent size collection of Germanium transistor radios. Also I have a red Panasonic Toot-a-Loop radio. After the grass is done and campgrounds are closed for the winter fixing my radios is how I amuse myself. I have manged to find vintage test equipment to allow me to service them.
 
CharlesInCharge said:
Quality electronics from the 90s and early 2000s made of a quality we don't see much any more; receivers, CD and DVD players, tape players, VCRs, speakers. Sony, Denon, Pioneer, Kenwood, Panasonic...

Need a way to play all my media when all the old stock is gone and nothing more new produced.
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I got a Denon receiver from my neighbor's trash, from the early 2000s maybe, with the 5-CD changer. Went out and bought some Polk speakers -- I love CDs still (nothing can touch their sound quality)! Both were in perfect condition.
 
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I got a couple of free components from a vendor at the flea market. A Nakamichi cassette deck and an Arcam rack mountable am/fm tuner.
 
Oysterquartz

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CharlesInCharge said:
Quality electronics from the 90s and early 2000s made of a quality we don't see much any more; receivers, CD and DVD players, tape players, VCRs, speakers. Sony, Denon, Pioneer, Kenwood, Panasonic...

Need a way to play all my media when all the old stock is gone and nothing more new produced.
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I collect a lot of "BPC" type receivers, the black 80s and 90s stuff. Favorites in my collection are my 90s Nakamichi stuff. I have two identical 90s Panasonic AV receivers, too. I've been basically stockpiling, too, though. With an aux in cord they can play music from anywhere for presumably the rest of eternity.
 
Not large numbers of anything, but I have some old stuff. Anybody want my blank 5¼" floppies leftover from a Pascal programming class I took in 1987? They were already obsolescent, but NC State required using them.

I have several spare electronic bike computers I don't use, because my CatEye ones from '89 and '93 continue working perfectly, one with over 100k miles. So do my mid-80s small quartz-analog travel alarm clocks---which are more accurate than many newer cheap quartz-based digital timepieces. In winter, I use an even older alarm clock, a circa 1962 GE synchronous-motor clock that still functions well. And I have a 50-year-old long-case ("grandfather") pendulum clock that's ticking right now, but might not count here because it contains nothing electronic.

I abandoned my circa 1950 AM-FM tube radio. Marantz hi-fi speakers I bought in '73 are still very much on active duty, but the original Sony receiver bought at the same time succumbed to a lightening strike back in '89.

I watch a '90s CRT analog TV (with converter box) because it was free, and I don't watch TV much, anyway.
 
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aquariuscsm said:
Growing up I was obsessed with loudspeakers. I would grab every one I could get my hands on. I loved taking the speakers out of broken sound equipment. The large pa horns were the ones I was most obsessed with. There was just something so special about them.
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Do you glance around retail stores, restaurants, theme parks etc to see the speakers they’re using? I do 😳
 
aquariuscsm said:
Our favorite Latin club we go to all the time has these huge horn loaded speakers called Martin Audio. They sound awesome!!
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In my younger speaker building days I built a pair of bookshelves with 6.5” mid-bass’ and 2x5” piezo horns… I used a simple resistor setup to pad down the high sensitivity piezo’ are known for and had foam tape around the perimeter of the horn those were the best sounding bookshelves I ever heard for maybe 30 bucks in parts. Every genre of music sounded awesome sold them for over a $100 to some guy with a bar he wanted like 4 more pairs.
 
Some of this stuff is still in regular use, some is "display only"...

Rotary dial phones
Console hi-fi stereo (vacuum tube)
Console B&W TVs (vacuum tube)
Portable B&W TVs (vacuum tube and transistorized)
Color CRT TVs (1990s)
Portable luggage-type record players (tube and transistorized)
Reel-to-reel tape recorders (various size reels, tube and transistorized)
Stereo 8-track tape players (home, portable, and auto)
Quad 8-track decks
Playtape cartridge players
AM and AM/FM transistor radios (1950s-1970s)
Portable battery-operated vacuum-tube radios
Table radios (tube and transistorized)
Turntables and record changers
Cassette tape decks and portable recorders
VHS and Betamax VCRs
1970s AM/FM stereo and Quad receivers
RCA CED "Needlevision" video disc player
Laser disc player
Early personal computers (Commodore 64, Timex/Sinclair, Interact)
Dialup modems
Plug-in electric wall clocks

That's off the top of my head, there's probably more. Wife wants me to get rid of it all so she doesn't have to deal with it if I croak first.
 
I bought another $6 excellent Sony DVD/CD tray style player today. I'll put it in a box with the dozen others. High quality and last many years but when they die, I have another on standby to cover down... then I strip the nice magnets from the drive and recycle the rest as best I can.

I remember when these units were $500. High quality electronics. Now, they're between $0-10 each. What changed? The devices did not change nor are they any less useful or relevant today. Yes, you can stream but that service is at least $10 per month per service so you could easily spend thousands annually just to listen or watch streaming entertainment.
 
Ok so this isn't obscure at all but I'll throw it in anyway. Earlier this year Logitec announced they were discontinuing the Harmony remote line of products. I had a 550, pretty basic model but great for controlling the TV/receiver/Fios/Xbox 360/Xbox One. Legit replaces all the other remotes.

My 5 year old son was riding around on a hoverboard last week and ran over the poor thing, killed it. My mind immediately went to that story about them being discontinued. Fortunately Best Buy apparently stocked up on the current equivalent, model 665, so I was able to replace it. (y)

jeff
 
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