Yes, that's high. I don't think I would offer more than $150 for the pair...and that only if I really wanted them badly...more like $100 for the pair since both are going to need cabinet as well as chassis work.
I would not have said "no thank you" but I would have communicated that the $250 was too much. I've heard claims that a chassis was supposedly "gone over" or "overhauled" but I usually ignore that unless I know who did the work or can see what was done. To some people, including many who should know better, that can mean something as minimal as changing the filter caps and maybe the audio coupling capacitors. It's rather like saying the set works because the tubes light up and they might get some noise out of the speaker. Aside from the electrical side of things both of these cabinets need to be refinished and or repaired, I'm not sure but it looks like the X model set may have the wrong knobs, it's supposed to have a set of either black rosette knobs or hex knobs, I can't tell what kind it has but they look like they may be a set of 1936-40 Philco knobs.
Regards
Arran
(This post was last modified: 12-11-2014, 10:03 PM by Arran.)
Kirk;
Let him stew on it for a while, then you can get them for $50-75 a piece like they should be, unless he can prove that one set actually was rebuilt with new capacitors and resistors. The model 71, if that's what it is, was a pretty middle of the road set, though it has a six legged cabinet, another version apparently had doors, according to the gallery. The 18/118 was a little better since it had a tuned RF amplifier stage and a class AB power output stage, and a second band, (the 18 had what they would have called the "police band", the 118 had more of a proper shortwave band) though the X cabinet was more mundane, but not ugly. If you look in the gallery there was also a 118B (cathedral), a 118B (shouldered tombstone), a 118H (Highboy) , a 118D (highboy with doors), an earlier version of a 118X, and a 118MX (Moderne inclined sounding board cabinet).
Regards
Arran
(This post was last modified: 12-12-2014, 11:35 PM by Arran.)