| Re: Western Electric 80th anniversary "300B" tube [message #89760 is a reply to message #87122] |
Fri, 08 February 2019 13:18   |
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Wayne Parham
Messages: 18675
Registered: January 2001
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Illuminati (33rd Degree) |
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I don't know the folks at TubeDepot.com but I bought a few tubes from them back before I really got to know Aki at TubesForAmps.com. Now I buy all my tubes from Aki, 'cause I've sort of gotten to know him and trust him.
My guess is someone found those WE tubes in an estate sale of some kind. That's how ALL the "NOS" stuff comes around. Some guy has a bunch of tubes in his attic and when he dies, if his heirs don't throw it all away as "obsolete junk," it finds its way into an estate sale. Sometimes it's from an old repair shop, and sometimes it's just personal stash. But usually the bigger finds are from a long-defunct hifi shop or something like that.
So the folks at TubeDepot.com were understandably excited when they found this pair of tubes. When they list them for $20K, in my mind, it's like setting the price at a "jillion dollars." It's not like they expect to ever sell them, although if someone offered the money they'd take it. And they would probably have "sellers remorse" if they did, because they are probably kind of emotionally attached to these rare tubes. It's like Smeagol's "precious" ring. They aren't trying to sell them; They are just showing off. I kind of get that.
Ironically, I'll bet a "jillion dollars" that they got 'em for next to nothing. I wouldn't be surprised if they paid a hundred bucks for a big pile of tubes in their original cardboard boxes, and that pair of tubes was in the pile. I've bought lots like that a few times - piles of hundreds of tubes - and found some pretty sweet old tubes in the pile. Lots of 45s and 2A3s, and of course a ton of rectifiers and random pentodes and stuff like that.
So anyway, I agree with you guys that 20-grand for a pair of light-bulbs is a bit steep, and could be seen as greedy, arrogant or crazy. But I think it's more like an unrealistic emotional attachment. I have some nutso emotional attachments like that to some of my stuff too. And a few of my rare things, I wouldn't sell for a "million bucks." 
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