[murf]

Have a chance to pick up a fully professionally restored 816K. Cabinet was refinished the right way with lacquer and looks awesome.
Chassis was also done professionally with all caps/resistors replaced as well as the whole chassis rewired.
I realize radio prices are down right now, but this is a hard to find radio in excellent restored condition.
Any ideas from you  guy's?

[Paul Philco322]

Is there a price to start bargaing at?

Paul

[mikethedruid]

Scouting around the net I saw a price of $395 for am RCA 816K in similar working condition, which, given that it is a 16 tube, 7 band top of the line model, is very reasonable. If the cabinet was done right, and I knew the electronics had been done right, I would pay even may more.

[murf]

Not sure yet, but I know it will be about that for sure. The restore would cost a lot more than that.
Hard to believe that radio prices have gone down that much.

[mikethedruid]

"Hard to believe that radio prices have gone down that much."     DOWN ? I remember when one could find things like this on the curb on trash day, free for the taking, or at the Salvation Army for $25 ! Little old AA5s went for a dollar or two if the bakelite case was cracked, and the wood ones went for maybe $5 if their cabinet was scratched and ugly.... provided me with a lot of radios to learn my trade on, and to amass parts from, especially tubes.

[murf]

Guess I can remember when radios of this caliber went for 1600 after being restored.
But that was 20 years ago.
The black dial shutter dials still bring a decent price around here.
Unrestored, most radios are still under $100.
But like I said, those are unrestored.

[Ron Ramirez]

> "Hard to believe that radio prices have gone down that much." DOWN ?

Yes, down. Remember 2008, when the real estate market crashed? Prior to that, as an example, Philco 90 cathedrals were routinely selling for $500-800. Now they sell for around $350 or so, often less.

And current market conditions aren't helping anything.

Granted, when I entered this hobby in 1974, the only radios considered "valuable" were certain 1920s battery sets and very early wireless equipment. Then cathedrals and tombstones took off. And then, Catalin sets - which were once thought of as undesirable and noncollectable - suddenly took off big time. More people entered the hobby, and prices increased. Then 2008 happened.

Since then, prices took a hit but then came back a little. Now, I'm not referring to eBay Fantasyland, where more and more sellers are trying to get $500+ for a $50 radio. Another thing keeping prices down is the fact that we're all getting older, more of us are passing on, and less and less younger people are coming in to take the place of those who have passed on.

I would say in about 20-30 years, folks like Jeremy S., Jayce, Vince M., Felix-Antoine, and a (very) few others will have all the radios they could ever want to choose from, with little competition.

Enjoy it while you can, people. In the end, it's just "stuff". And you can't take it with you when you go.

(I really did not mean for this to turn into an editorial - it just came out that way.)

[murf]

I agree Ron,
Makes it hard to invest too much on some of these old radios to restore.
But I still have a few customers that are willing to pay up to $400-$500 for the right radio for their living room.
The best selling with the higher prices are the Zenith black dials made in the later 30's.
Especially the shutterdials.
But I do this hobby for the fun of bringing them back to life again.
Getting harder to do with age creeping up on me.
Vision gets fuzzy and the dexterity isn't what is used to be.
When I start burning myself with a hot iron, then I will retire from repairing and just concentrate on looking at my collection.
Not like I was ever that good at trouble shooting anyway. Thats why I rely on the forum for advice.
When I get the RCA home, I will try to send a picture.
I do have another of these that I restored 7 or 8 years ago.
That one has the remote control that still works too. Would the remote make this one more collectable?
Gotta run, so have a great week Ron!
Hope all is well on your end.
murf

[radiorich]

Hello Ron,
Yes, I have never thought of this as an investment I do restorations from time to time for people and most of my radios are worth more than I paid for them Speaking of model 816k I have the chassis from a model 811K

[Arran]

I can confirm what was said, not only from my own memory, but from glancing at some old radio price guides of the early 1990s. In my opinion an RCA 816 is worth having, not so much because of it's resale value, which wasn't really smashing even 30 years ago, but because they are attractive, good performing sets, with a decent audio output stage. I have been keeping my eyes open for an Canadian G.E version as they have a slightly different cabinet and not as common as the RCA versions. I  think the resale values have been going down with the generational change, the WW2 generation is all but gone, Korean war generation not far behind, and what drives prices is nostalgia, not age. This is not unique to vintage radios, clocks, and gramophones have taken a dump as well, the odd person may want one as a piece of objects d'art but isn't collecting them. On the other hand people collect early P.Cs and restore them, which were more or less considered e-waste maybe 20 years ago, but the right makes, and models bring big bucks.
  RadioTVPhonoNut is facing a dilemma now, he made the mistake of collecting a lot of things that he is now faced with getting rid of at some point, like radio-phono combo units or 1980s stereo equipment. I suggested parting the rougher less interesting stuff out, and if not so rough, giving it away. I learned to stop dragging a lot of junk like this home because it ended up taking up space that could be used for something more interesting, once I passed on an HMV radio-phono combo, which was interesting in itself but bulky, and two weeks later I found a Rogers Ten-Twelve. You have to face it that it isn't worth collecting, and restoring everything that comes along, sometimes it's just better to pass it along to someone who wants to work on it.
Regards
Arran

[PhilcoJohn]

I have a RCA 816K. I love the style of the radio and it rattles the windows when you let it. It sure is a radio that anyone should have in their collection.  

[murf]

I think everyone should have one!
murf
I would post a couple pics if I knew how to do it on the site now.
Could send a couple pics to someones email, if they could post them for me.
Photobucket won't do it anymore unless you subscribe. No More free photobucket.

[Jayce]

I would still love to have an 816K. A friend has a rather battered, but good working 813K and it is impressive in its own right.

[Jayce]

Murf emailed me the photos of his two 816K radios and asked me to post them for him, so here they are. Two very nice radios indeed!

   

   

Murf, I also had to crop your photos because they were one megabyte over the limit, hope you don't mind.

Jayce.

[Paul Philco322]

I could sit in front of and tune around on one of those for hours.....Beauties.

Thanks for posting Jayce.

Paul