Jan. 31, 2011, 10:45 p.m. — Fate was working against me — or for me, its a little hard to say: The “Holy Grail” of CW keys, the ultra-rare Horace G. Martin Autoplex key sold on eBay while I was busy and unable to track the auction!
Perhaps it was all for the best, as I avoided both the disappointment of entering a failed bid, and the crap-hitting-the-fan moment if my wife found out how much I would have spent to buy the Autoplex.
The key sold — as expected — outside the price range of all but the collectors with the deepest pockets: The winning big was $3,739 — a huge sum of money for what would amount to a large paperweight in any key collector’s display. That’s not to say I wouldn’t love to have the Autoplex; it would be extremely difficult to justify sinking that much into something that just wouldn’t be used (though admittedly that’s never stopped me before!).
I also missed out on some really nice Vibroplex and non-Vibroplex keys, though my interest was more curiosity than in actually buying.
Actually, something on eBay did catch my eye this evening — an Icom IC-756PROII for $1400. That’s not a real bad deal for the ProII, though given its original price of about $2000, its pretty stiff. I’ve considered snapping one up at a good price for my library listening post. Yeah, I’ve got the Hallicrafters SX-130 and the BC-348Q receivers in there, but a ProII would be a sweet, sweet addition. Or perhaps a trade of my FT-450 for a FT-817ND would be in order? That would be a nice deal that would mean no cash outlay on my part — a nice consideration! Or maybe a trade on a ProII? Hmmm …
The drawback of the ProII is the size: I don’t believe it will fit as neatly on my bookcase shelf like the other two rigs. The ProII is a fairly deep rig; I’ll have to check the specs. The 817 may be the best bet overall — compact, battery operated, HF/VHF/UHF.
Of course, window shopping and tire-kicking is cheap, and I’m all about cheap, hi!
We’ll see which way the winds of change blow in the shack … and go from there!