Car Boot Bargains

[Sparks]

My car boot sales completely finance the hobby! I do not even buy items if they say they are working. I get the pleasure from getting them going, and then, like Crackle, I sell them unless they are something really special. I am keeping the Avo valve tester. But I sold the magnetic amplifier that cost £10 for £75 on Ebay. My finest find, that I have mentioned before, was a Burndept 4, purchased for £25 and sold at a London auction for £2,400! Really, I had come within an ace of taking it to the tip, but a chance mention of it when talking to Christie's auction house about other things prompted me to send it there! I got an Avo 8 for £5, but have kept that, and use it a lot! Before that, I got another Avo 8 for £10, but the movement was burned out, but I kept it for spares, and it came in useful for the next one that, although working OK, had a pretty poor condition case.
Bob

[tiv48]

My best car boot find this year was a ferguson 3V00 video recorder for £1
I bought it because i still have plenty of spares for these.
needless to say what was needed was a belt kit and i did not have a complete one
it took me 2 months to find one nothing else needed doing even the heads were good.
just sold it on ebay for £62 .
Rob T

[Sparks]

That was a good buy. Taking a bit of a chance though with a video, but it turned out OK! The computer I am using now came from the car boot sale for about £89! He was selling quite a few of them, and offered a 3-month warranty. He looked an honest type, so I got it, as the hard drive was failing on my previous one. It performed so well that I got my wife a laptop, and myself another laptop from the same bloke, and all three are working perfectly a year on!
Bob

[Sparks]

Three "R" Valves for £10.        The filaments were all OK, and they lit up like light bulbs.    Two had emission so low they would not work.   The third worked, but pretty poor performance (In an audio oscillator and a 1 valve set).
Bob

[davegsm82]

I've had lots of low value items over the years from boot sales which I repair/tidy up then sell on, which helps fund my hobby, usually things like iPod docks and such.

Probably the biggest single win was 3x CV4004 valves, Mil-spec ECC83's brand new in boxes which tested 100+% for £5. They made over £450 total profit when sold individually but this was some time ago now. I actually didn't have any clue what they were when I bought them, just thought they looked like double triodes so were worth a punt.

I frequently buy speakers when I seem them, recently bought a pair of KEF HTS3001's for £5.

Dave.

[Sparks]

That was a very good purchase. For some reason, double triodes always seem to attract high prices, but yours were exceptional. Some time ago, when I scrapped my large double beam oscailloscope in favour of a new smaller one, I put all the E88CC double triodes on Ebay and they sold for more than the 'scope originally cost me (It was 2nd hand to begin with!) 6SN7 valves usually command high prices and also 5U4G rectifier valves.
Bob

[Refugee]

The price of double triodes has got stupid on E-bay. I was looking at my HIFI and wondering if those new ones from RS could go on adapters and free up some dosh.
I am not that hard up but I did some testing anyway. I can now test double triodes in a real amplifier with audio.

[Terry]

 For some reason, double triodes always seem to attract high prices ...

Funnily enough, this came up for discussion at the Basildon bash yesterday - specifically the ECC803S

https://tubeworldexpress.com/collections/preamp/ECC803S

Go on - you know you'd like a couple ...!

[Pat Pending]

The local boot sale venue is just off a narrow road that I travel on my way to work. Earlier this year a truck had shed its load of timber, so I decided to have an early bird snout round and came away from the first stall with an SME Mk 3 tone arm in perfect condition for 50 pence, and another stall yielded a Vidor vhf valve portable for a pound.  The lady selling it said she thought it worked when it was last used years ago, but that it had no plug and warned me that the batteries may be a little difficult to get!

I felt sorry for the lorry driver having to handball all that timber back on his truck, but I like to think of it as fate wanting me to have that old Vidor. The tone arm was sold "shortorder" to finance the restoration, when I get "round to it".

I hardly ever frequent boot sales, but was pleased I did that day.
Andy.

[Sparks]

Refugee,
I doubt if anyone buys the double triodes at those prices. I don't know why it happens, but lots of things are advertised online for crazy prices. A book I had published in 2006 (Nothing to do with radio) was originally marketed at £14.99 and sold out long ago, but there is a copy on Amazon for £698.97, which is absolutely ridiculous as it is only a softback!
Bob