I’ve sold a lot of stuff on eBay lately and the changes haven’t really affected me yet. Mostly non-radio gear, but this last week I sold two Heathkit antenna switches I built from kits of parts about 30 years ago and got £40 odd for them. Today I sold 7 marble eggs for £27. last month I sold a German HD bike carrier for almost £400, and it went to Scotland. No complaints from me as a seller yet, and I still have my 100% rating and over 1000 feedbacks. On there since 2002.
73 Phil G4OBK
Now that has always been a rip off!
73 Phil
Another recent successful sale that had me wondering if it would get there - One of my Yaesu FT-1500M 2m FM radios,. I had two and kept one. The other went on eBay and a chap from Saudi Arabia bid on it. Around £95 I got. He needed me to send it to his shipping agent near Heathrow. I wasn’t keen but went ahead. It took 3 weeks over Xmas to reach Riyadh but he got it and was delighted. In 2023 early 2024 when things were better for buyers I shifted about £1000 worth of SK gear after a friend died on the auction site.
Time for bed now - the wee dram I had watching Trump News is wearing off and the FT8 DX of interest has been worked…Christmas Island is a lot closer to Japan than Australia, that surprised me when I looked at PSK Reporter map.
Good night.
Phil G4OBK
Sorry to hear your friend died on the auction site. 
Unique and still very usable radios are very desirable, particularly where there is no modern equivalent. Eg. Yaesu ft-847 Earth Station and Yaesu ft-857 portable 100w shack in a box. I own both. Second hand values are greater than I paid (new) for mine.
Why? Maybe the rise in popularity of satellites (ft-847) and portable operations (857). Maybe the desire for simple, well made radios. Maybe the fact (847) that the equivalent Sat. radio these days is an £1800 icom. The equivalent (857) portable 100w radio is the ft-891 and it doesn’t do VHF/UHF.
If manufacturers read the market and stopped ramming expensive touch screen waterfall radios down our throats, residual prices would fall because we’d all be buying the new stuff.
Oh for a comma!
Perhaps the Japanese hams want them. It’s the biggest market and where the manufacturers are based.
Leaving it as it is Ron without comma, you can’t beat a bit of “black humour”.
73 Phil
My first Ebay sale was a Leak valve amplifier, which would have made a really good boat anchor, and it sold for really silly money (around £1k) and was shipped to China 
Best bit though - I had a second and it went the same way!!!
When moving house 25 years back I sold a lot of vintage hifi to a dealer. Leak Stereo 20 PA, Leak Varislope preamp, Leak Troughline II Tuner (all valved), Garrard 301 in a BBC mount, Rega Tone Arm, Armstrong 521 amp (solid state), 2x new Gold Lion KT88 and 4x new RCA 6550 valves for somewhere around £700. I could have sold it separately for more but this was OK for a deal to clear a load of gear. For cash too!
I spat my coffee out reading that!
The only worry about having a 20-30yr old radio is lack of custom parts should something like a display/CPU fail. It’s seems madness that you can more easily fix something like an FT-101 than an FT-847. But that’s the price you pay for using custom electronics… you can door more application specific stuff for much less cost. But how long will those parts be available?
(My contest mob used an 847 for 6m/4m VHF FD for many years till it developed 847-Alzeheimers and was retired to the Sunnyland Home for Transceivers that don’t know which band/mode they’re on and whether they are in RX or TX )
What I don’t understand is Icom started the DC-daylight radios with the IC-706 in 1995, improving it to give more power on 2 m and then add 70 cm stopping production in 2009. alledgedly the best selling radio of all time. At one time everyone had one, I sold mine (706MkII) last year as it hadn’t been used in 10years. Yeasu matched with the FT-100 but that used to total its PA FETs in an instant and they became unobtanium. You could buy FT-100s with no output for peanuts for a long time till someone figured out how to fix the FT-100.
Icom produced many 160 m to 70 cm base station and mobiles all with a 706 heritage. Yaesu produced the FT-847 which did 160 m to 70 cm but also had full duplex for satellite ops. Icom’s full duplex radios were the IC-820 (2 m/70 cm only) IC-821 (2 m/70 cm only) IC-910 (2 m/70 cm with 23 cm option) Kenwood were last to the ball with the TS-2000 HF/VHF/UHF/SHF and satellite mode.
The game changers were the 817/857/897 radios from Yaesu. Essentially the same radio with different PA and packing. And they sold. I only sold both my 817s last year but at one time it seemed everyone I knew had an 817 (or more) and/or 857. The 897 was the one that seemed less popular.
So the technology existed and was sold for reasonable money. The radios were not brilliant but very, very competent at what they did. With that in mind what has driven the big manufacturers to stop producing shack in a box radios? There has to be something that made them decide not to bother fitting enough gubbins to do 20/10W on VHF and UHF as well as 100W HF-6 m.
I can understand why an 857 keeps it price as there is nothing like it on sale new. Is there a pent up demand for the shack in a box or is their market research telling them something different to what we SOTA people think?
When I got my KX2 apart from the lightness and bigger display/buttons, I didn’t jump about thinking “how did I activate without this”. But after a while of listening and using you really realise just how muddy the sound is on an 817. No disrespect to the 817, it is what is and I used one for 19 years and feel “naked” no longer owning one. Since I sold my 706 (100W HF/6 m and 10W 2m) I no longer have a compact/mobile 100W HF rig. The fact I never used it for 10 years doesn’t explain why I keep checking prices of 857s! Perhaps I should buy an external 100W amp and use that with my K2/KX2/705 instead. Must not look for a K2 100W PA as it will be silly money but a very desirable item!
That means I think the IC-705 is the only shack in a box HF to UHF all mode radio on sale. I like mine but it doesn’t get used much as it has no internal ATU. The touch panel is a gimmick to me, I have an artificial finger with mine as it doesn’t work if you have gloves on, you know SOTA in Scotland! But the signal panadapter is well worth it. Without it I doubt I’d have worked Jack GM4COX on an obstructed 13 cm path last time it was out activating with me.
I actually feel uneasy about buying SK gear, Maybe superstition but I sometimes feel uneasy about having a dead persons gear, Is that key going to start operating by an unseen hand in the middle of the night when the radio is switched off! Don’t laugh, have a look on Google for Robert the Doll who resides at a museum in the Florida Keys!
I would love a IC-705 just being able to do data modes somewhere remote with a Microsoft Tablet over the WLAN is a game changer, I have never used an ATU with my FT-818 and I haven’t used the one on my G90. I think the bug bear is having to get an external linear amp though with both IC-705 and FT-818
I’ll tell you about the K2 of Death… at least 3 people involved in it’s repair and construction died 
I obtained a JRC 135 for silly money from the estate of G3PYU because I had helped with the clearance and sale of hundreds of items of the late G3PYU’s QTH. Radios, components, cool stuff ( the binoculars normally fixed to the WWII 88mm Flak gun, visible here File:Kommandogerat 40 director helsinki 2.jpg - Wikipedia ) the list was endless.
I wasn’t using the 135 and saw someone offering a K2 basic kit partly built to swap. A deal was done and a complete kit, partly built came my way. The story was the original purchaser bought it as a retirement project but suffered a debilitating stroke a few months into the construction and sold the kit to another ham and died shortly after. The second ham rushed on soldering away not following the instructions and then had a fatal heart attack. It made its way to the guy I did the swap with at a club junk sale.
It languished in the “needs doing” pile here for 4 years till I persuaded a good friend who had a nice sideline in fixing bu**ered Elecraft kits offered to look at it as I was too busy to ever have a clear run at it. The deal was he would sort it out in his sare time. 2.5 years later he apologised that he felt guilty he had done nothing but it was complete and working well and he would ship it up. No it can wait 8months till the next Blackpool, no rush but he shipped it up. I unpacked it and yes, it was a beautiful working basic K2. It went on the shelf as I needed to pony up for an SSB board and transverter interface etc. My friend developed a strange cancer and died 6 months after working on this K2.
I decided to buy a K2 with the options I wanted and to sell the K2-of-Death ASAP. It went on eBay and was sold for £350ish. I have no idea if the purchaser is still with us. But everyone who has worked on that K2 had died within 6 months of soldering to it. Yeah, better it’s in your shack and not in my shack 
I found a fully loaded K2 locally for £600 (K2, SSB, 160m, 60m, transverter interface, battery, ATU, DSP filters, Heil mic, assorted plugs, coax and nice camera bag)
I never made a note of the serial number of the K2-of-Death but should have!
The IC-7100 is still manufactured, not a SOTA rig though.
We all know it was 666.
As we await the arrival of the Yaesu FTX-1F which is shaped a bit like the IC-705 I think, although I haven’t yet seen a 3D photo of one to check out the depth of the unit. Touch screen again, similar functions as on the FT-101 and FT-710 - a waste of time for old skoolers like me. They say it is the “FT-817 update for the 2020s” according to the ML&S advert on the back page of a recent Radcom, where Martin was touting for £50 deposits on reserve orders without knowing the final price… It does have 4m which is nice…
73 Phil
Phil, prerelease photos FTX-1F with ATU fitted
IC-705 UK price (lots of deals on accessories available)
£1349
KX2 + ATU + essential options no battery from Lutz (Swiss VAT removed, CHF->GBR + UK VAT) = £1785
FTX-1F + ATU, Andy’s guess £1599-£1699.
What’s your guess for the price?
EDIT I think there is a better price for a KX2, ATU, MH3, battery and external charger from Lutz.
That’s mental.
£1250
I think with ATU, £1395 is my guess (Two months state pension). With the tuner pictured on the back its looks like an awkward thing to handle. No doubt we’ll see them on the Yaesu stand at Friedrichshafen Andy. (I will be in the Chinese restaurant on the Thursday night again in Tettnang).
73 Phil
