Decided to see how boxes have changed over the years.

[Coast Steve]

Thought you guys might like this. I have some old catalogs here from Radio shack, and took some pictures to share. Some nice looking boxes for sure. It's strange to see how they went from smaller , then bigger boxes, then back to small.
Shown in order. 1982-1833-1984-1985 1986- (87-88 I don't have) 1989-1990
Update: I got 1981 from the internet but put it last.

 

[MyOhMy]

The most surprising thing to me is the retail price at the time. OK, we knew even half decent audio has never been exactly cheap historically but I'm still surprised as just how expensive audio was 'back in the day.

I seem to remember buying an Hitachi TRK-8130 in 1981/82 for somewhere between £90-£130 and that felt like an arm and a leg kinda price back then. I bought my first nice Hi-Fi stack in 1975 and, although I can't remember how much it all cost, I do remember it was very expensive compared to my income at the time and took me about two years to pay off in sizeable monthly instalments.

In 1989 I bought a 20" television along with a video player/recorder and I still remember how much it hurt to pay some £1700 for both items - and they weren't farkin special either!

 

[Hajidub]

Also notice how the price goes down along with the build quality. The precursor to the death of affordable/quality electronics!

 

[Coast Steve]

Yea they were not cheap at all. That was real money back then.
Something to really save up for.
And don't forget when CD's came out, the models that played them were very expensive.
I think that was about 88

 

[MyOhMy]

Yea they were not cheap at all. That was real money back then.
Something to really save up for.
And don't forget when CD's came out, the models that played them were very expensive.
I think that was about 88

I didn't even consider buying a CD player when they first hit the market, why on earth would I when such a novelty item would never catch on anyway, eh?

 

[Coast Steve]

LOL, me either actually.
But I did do something dumb and sell all my records when cassettes came out.
Now records are back for some I've noticed.

I guess all the hardware for music playing is out. Today it's all digital. But you don't really own anything substantial with digital.

No box to look at, no card to pull out and read, you can't get it signed if you meet the artist.
No "included poster for your wall".
Yep, i'm old school.
Hey I even once had a little boom box with an 8 track on the side!

One thing about cassette's though that I like the best is that you can fix them if they screw up.
CD's you're holding garbage if they don't work.
Digital..........well you just don't stand a chance.

I miss the 70's big time.

 

[MyOhMy]

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ That's pretty much how I feel. I sold almost every cassette and vinyl album I owned once I saw the convenience & success of CD's and have regretted this for many years.

In more recent times I've begun to build a 'hard copy' music collection of vinyl albums, cassettes & CD's with much satisfaction, I now have something in the region of '11 feet'(!) of vinyl albums, some 800-900 cassettes along with mmm.........800-900-ish CD's as far as I can tell. I've bought a few tape decks (Hi-Fi type) to play the cassettes on and realise I'd forgotten how exceptionally good the music sounded (especially classical music and opera). After a few years listening to CD's I must have somehow convinced myself that cassettes were merely the old fashioned technology of a by gone age that couldn't have been that nice to listen to anyway but we did because that's all all we had in the ol' days!

 

[Northerner]

Love seeing these old catalogues as I used to spend ages looking at them as a kid wishing I could afford them. They were soooo expensive! That’s why the best one I had BITD was a crappy Sharp GF4646 but I loved it

 

[MyOhMy]

Love seeing these old catalogues as I used to spend ages looking at them as a kid wishing I could afford them. They were soooo expensive! That’s why the best one I had BITD was a crappy Sharp GF4646 but I loved it

Indeed: "Bagsie this"................Bagsie that"................."Bagsie.........."

 

[Hajidub]

Love seeing these old catalogues as I used to spend ages looking at them as a kid wishing I could afford them. They were soooo expensive! That’s why the best one I had BITD was a crappy Sharp GF4646 but I loved it

Well here's a PDF link to every Radio Shack catalog all the way back to 1939.

http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/