SteveTheShadow wrote:Paul Barker wrote:I have some of
these but they aren't for sale. If I find them at the lockup in time I'll bring them to Owsten so you can hear them.
I couldn't afford them if they were for sale
Valve prices are getting stupid these days.
Yes that is why I can't afford to sell them I have no private pension and not many years paid up for state pension with few years of work left. So I have to think about food and clothing during meagre retirement.
I paid Derek Rocco £7.50 each when it was a small fortune to pay that much for an ECC82. We had a conversation about the loss of the Mullard ECC83 and he said the next to go will be the ECC82 I have these if you want some. He was right. The ECC81's then were awash but now those have joined the rarity procession.
My biggest mistake was sending about 50 Mullard ECC83's to an American guy in 1998 for £1 each. Over here they hadn't hit the giddy levels yet, he knew that over there they had, but he found a mug across the pond. That was before eBay opened up to the Bits and we began to see values across the world. For a very brief period before the UK dealers became conversant with what had just awoken me to the world market, you could buy 6sn7's from Derek and double your money on eBay. Very quickly everybody found out! Then the pendulum swung the other way, and those people you used to get valves cheap from, used mythical heresay statements to boost their value. It was all over.
Last time I spoke to a British dealer I asked "what do you think will happen to our old valves? " What was in my mind was will they always go up in value or will the bubble burst. His response surprised but also woke me up. "we will run out of them". That I think is the truth. The future is no more stock of what we once took for granted.
What I am not sure of is whether after that time the few rag tag valves we have left will become worthless. With everyone using new production Chinese. They have acording to what I read from you lot here, improved.
Prices seem to have had a recent upturn. I discovered this while looking for valves myself, and decided not to buy any. Just look harder for what I have.
Found the 1619's thankfully. They have gone up, but fortunately mine were from the era others hadn't caught on to them.
"Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not yet completely sure about the universe." – Albert Einstein