This page is dedicated to telling the stories of those brave enough to share the facts of how they got started collecting antique radios.   Not all will share, but those who do will inherit their place in radio-collecting history right here!
Steve Adams (Birmingham, Alabama)  Your Friendly Webmaster
I used to frequent a small flea market in Fort Payne, Alabama, operated by a pair of senior adults.  They had one building with stuff for sale and another house furnished with more items for sale.  My wife took a liking to the couple and we started buying something there every time we passed through.   One trip, though, there was nothing that we even remotely wanted to buy.  We sat in the living room of the sale house, talking about it; the proprietor was standing on the front porch, listening.  She saw a radio sitting on a table; it was a Bendix AM/FM Bakelite radio.  She suggested we buy it.  "What do I want with an old radio?" I protested.  "It probably doesn't even work."  From the front porch we heard, "It works, too, ya know!"  She said, "It works, it works!"  I examined the radio: it was in very good shape.  I looked at the $39 price tag and said, "But he wants $39 for this old radio!"  From the front porch came, "I'll let ya have it for thirty bucks!"  Thirty dollars and a few hours later after our return home, I examined the old Bendix.  I opened the cabinet and had an uncontrollable urge to plug it in.  I did.  Then I saw the glow of the tubes and that's all she wrote... 
Vitaly Brousnikin (Petrozavodsk, northwest Russia)
I have a feeling I was interested in old radios through all my life. Maybe it is genetic memory?  My grandfather, a journalist by education, took a great interest in radio broadcasting in 1930’s. He was also an active listener. I remember him sitting at the radio set trying to tune in some DX station through the mess of static.  It was my granddad who gave me my first radio set as a present in early 70’s. It was a big and heavy multi-band set in a wooden cabinet model "October."  Frankly, I was only 7 then and it did not become the first piece of my collection - after some time it was lost.  My present collection is about 3 years old.  A receiver of the same model as my very first one in most precious to me.  Besides some radios made in this country in 1930-50’s I also have some R-sets produced by Phillips, Tefag , and RCA.  A radio of direct amplification made in Leningrad in 1934 is the oldest of them all.  Unfortunately it does not work now because of wasting of the materials, of which resistors and caps are made.  In case of need I reconstruct my radios carefully.  Fortunately, we can still find here old spare parts and materials to use them for refinishing.  Working with my collection brings me a kind of energy.   Every R-set was some time "a favourite of the family" and the spirit of old times hides under every chassis and revives in the soft radiation of the tubes.   Please visit my web site, Red Star Radiosite.
John Goller   [K9UWA] (Fort Wayne, Indiana)
Brought home a Truetone D-724 because back in 1959 when I first had a Ham License.  I was in High School, had no money.  I had used one of these with an added BFO circuit and a Band spread capacitor as a Ham Receiver.  You maybe wonder why this particular radio?  Well, I played with a bunch of these old wooden radios, as in 1959 people were throwing them out right and left in favor of those lousy plastic AA5 kitchen radios.   This Truetone was the best playing radio of the lot.  So, like all us aging "Baby Boomers," a few years ago when I saw one in a garage sale, I bought it.   Nostalgia?  When the Wife saw it, the cabinet was in very pathetic condition.   She decided that it would really be nice if it was refinished and put back together...so it's all Her Fault.  And now we have about 400 of them!
Adam Guha  (Weston, Connecticut)
I started liking radios very young.  When I was a baby, I was into model cars; my first radio was a 1960's Rolls Royce transistor radio that was my uncle's.  I still have it, and it works (it needed a little "repair").  Then I got a coat pocket size transistor set; I used it so much, it is now all beat up and only plays when it wants to.  I later got an Amico solid state AM/FM portable, which sounded like it was a tin can.  When I was about 8 years old, and my mom and I went to a garage sale, where I saw an old Zenith clock radio.  It had tubes but was a relatively late one.  I picked it up for a couple dollars.  Then I picked up a General Electric A-87 console for $5.  It was missing the speaker, but after that I bought any old radio I saw.  I have built up quite a nice collection.  I have many favourite tube radios, but I am picking a couple: a Philco 84 which plays well and is used every day, and a US radio and TV "Gloritone 26-Screen Grid."   I have about 200 radios, many being transistors.  Although I prefer consoles, cathedrals, and portables, I collect many different types.  I am 12 years old and have a web page, Adam's Antique Radios.
Dwight Hill  (Bloomington, Illinois)  
I have enjoyed repairing and restoring old radios since 1994.   My first restoration was a 1938 3 band RCA K80 console that now belongs to my in-laws.  The radio had been in my grandmother in-law's house for years.  My father in-law asked if I’d be interested in trying to fix it.   "Just don’t throw it away or get rid of it," he said.  Wanting to prove that his daughter hadn’t married a bum, I accepted the invitation and brought the radio home.  Several months passed before I got the nerve to dig in to it.  I knew nothing about tube electronics. My college background was transistors, op amps, digital, and medical equipment.  I found out what the Rider’s Troubleshooters Manuals were all about and found someone who helped me find a schematic to the radio.  Several tubes and many capacitors later, I plugged it in and turned it on for the first time.  I slowly turned the tuning dial on the broadcast band.  All I heard was scratchy noise, but even that was exciting.  I had noticed that some of the plates of the tuning capacitor seemed to rub against each other as I turned the tuning knob.  This couldn’t be good, I thought, so I turned it off.  Carefully I separated all the plates that seemed to be rubbing and tried turning it on again.   The noise was gone!  Slowly, as I turned the tuning dial I began to hear music!  Faint, but definitely music!  It was a choir, and they were singing a favorite hymn of mine, "How Great Thou Art."  I called my wife down to the basement for her to hear.  Together we laughed at the irony of this being the first music we heard from her grandmother’s radio.  I realized that getting the radio working had nothing to do with me.  Instead, it had to do with what the choir on the radio was singing about.  And oh, how great and fun it has been since then!   Please visit my Attic.
Art Hoch  (McPherson, KS) 
Several years ago (maybe 25-30?) I was in the office paying for some building materials at a local lumber yard. I noticed a radio playing there was the exact model my parents had in our home when I was a 9 or 10 year-old boy. It was one of the Zenith R615 series, brown bakelite with the CD markings on the dial. Since it was being used, I assumed it wasn't for sale. At that time I had no tube radios, and with small children headed for college someday (I hoped), no money anyway to start a collection. About 5 years ago I was in the same office and noticed the radio was gone. I asked the owners what had happened to it, thinking maybe I could buy it. No such luck. They told me it had been sold to a person I knew. The effort to repurchase it from him was futile. So I began to look in antique stores, etc. believing I would find one and relive the last of the golden age of radio broadcasting. I couldn't find a trace of one until I visited a nearby town and saw a Zenith R615 in a radio engineer's collection on display in a museum. That fueled the fire. About that time a friend told me about auctions on the internet. I checked that out and the bug really bit. Eventually I purchased all 5 of the Zenith R615's; a brown, ivory, green, black and gray. I never realized the other colors existed. A friend who helped me look for radios gave me (believe it or not) several other tube radios, and then sold me an Atwater Kent model 70 console (1930) for $20 that he had stored in an old warehouse. I have since refinished the AK and restored the chassis. The cabinet refinished beautifully, I got a new grille cloth, and it plays great! In addition I have six other consoles, a beautiful 1948 Philco, two Zeniths; an 8S154 (1937) and a 9S232 shutterdial (1938), a wonderful 1939 General Electric, and a Firestone Air Chief, model and date unknown but probably circa 1940. I have a modest collection of about 80 radios, mostly table models, although I do have a Philco cathedral (Model 37-84) that is the exact radio my parents had before their Zenith R615. What a great hobby!
Chris King   (Toronto, Canada)
In the summer of 1990, I was coming home from a camping trip up on the Bruce Peninsula (during which I managed to put my dad's new car into a swamp, but that's another story) and stopped at a little junk dealer just outside of Wiarton.  Sitting out front was an old Stromberg Carlson 62.   This had sat out in the rain for years, it seemed.  The veneer was all coming off, it had no knobs, the dial was ruined, the tubes were all smashed out, it was wonderful!  I got it for $10.  It turned out that the thing was totally infested with spiders, including one great big fat grey one that was still hiding under the tuning capacitor days later (and took very poorly to my alcohol spray).  To this day, it is still known among our friends as 'the Spider radio'.  What can I say?  I was hooked.  I don't have a good picture of the Spider radio, so this is a picture of another one from my web site.
Henry McCorkle   (Roanoke, Virginia)
My interest in old radios got started early one day in August 1996 here in Roanoke,Virginia - as I was making the yard sale circuit in the northwestern part of the city - I spotted a small Bakelite Philco radio for sale - I asked the lady how much it was - and she said "Five dollars" - I had no problem with that & paid her the money - almost immediately I was surrounded by other persons who wanted to buy it from me - to which I said "No" - I took the radio home - and it worked! (which it still does to this day!) - the radio is a Philco model PT-25 which came out around 1939 - other than having to replace filter capacitors in it 2 weeks ago - it sounds great - I use it every day to listen to the all-news station here in town (my girlfriend likes the radio too!) - my collection has grown in the last 18 months from just one radio to over 100 radios (including 6 catalin models) today - I like the small sets from around 1935 to 1955 - even though I have all these radios - my favorite will still be the small Philco radio that got me started on this journey over 18 months ago!  Please visit my web site, Radios on the Web.
  Luca Posca   (Como, Italy) 
I've always been in love with music since I was a kid and for my 19th birthday I decided to spend all of my savings to buy a high quality stereo.  It gave me lots of satisfaction.  Living so close to "hi-end" audio equipment let me appreciate the mellow sound of vacuum tubes amplifiers - lovely - and within some months I was completely lost in tubes.  I started seeking everything containing those wonderful electronic devices and the first thing on which I laid my hands on was a 1935 3 tubes radio that my father ( who used to collect old stuff in general ) had found many years ago in an attic.  I dusted it carefully and promised to myself to respect that old object to avoid disassembling it, but temptation was too strong so I pulled out the chassis and plugged it in.  The radio didn't work but the red glow of lit filaments looked just like something magic to me....This happened 9 years ago.  Today my radios (about 50) are kicking me out of my home but I can't stop loving them!!!
George Shields, Jr.   (Somerville, New Jersey)
I originally collected antique telephones from the USA, England and Germany.   About 20 years ago I found a Philco 20 Deluxe still working and got hooked.   The common link of human communications through technology struck me as fascinating (between telephones and radios).  Since that Philco, I've built up a collection of over 100+ battery and pre 1940 radios, plus more recently, pre Korean War televisions and German radios.   The common thread of communications through technology continues to fascinate me and drives my interests.
Jan Thøgersen   (Århus, Denmark) 
Greetings from a guy who needs a bigger house!  Have you ever stood in front of a Bang & Olufsen product, saying to yourself, "Boy, would I like to have one of those?"  Well, I have--and that's the way I started my unique collection of vintage Bang & Olufsen products covering the glorious days of tube radios.  I have collected a wide selection of B&O radios, shavers, tape recorders, portable radios, and TV sets.  My collection covers the periods from the modest start of the company in 1925 in Struer, Denmark, up through the thirties, through WW2 in the forties, when the factory was sabotaged, through the fifties, which brought e ven more innovation and new inventions, and up through the sixties, when the use of transistors revolutionized the industry.  I have all the pieces of my collection on my web site, yet my collection is far from complete.

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