I thought I'd posted this already too, but apparently not according to the old threads.
My love affair began with the breakdancing/graffiti culture craze that came through in the erly 80s. I was about 10 at the time and fell in love with the concept of the ghettoblaster being the new and incredible new way to experience music. I was only a young kid though living in a coastal town in Australia and there was no 'scene' for this kind of thing at all. I did have a friend of the family in Melbourn who WAS a part of it. He was into graffiti, knew how to breakdance and had a damned big boombox. He was about 15 or so and was quite my role model. So he taught me how to moonwalk (to the complete astonishment of my primary school) and he recorded a lot of music for me on his radio. I wasn't old enough to have any kind of income to buy a big blaster, but I lusted after them in electrical store catalogues and in the stores themselves. I must say though that I NEVER saw a true ghettoblaster in a store at that age, my only memory of seeing true blasters was in the footage on tv and music videos that had them in there. I always thought back then that if it didn't have two antennas it wasn't a ghettoblaster, ahaha! But I was all about the LED meters, EQ's and of course the physical size and to my very limited retail experience at a local level I never saw these kind of radios for sale. Obviously I was heavily handicapped by my geographical location, as they were obviously sold en masse down here somewhere. But even if I found one I'd never be able to afford it as an 11 year old kid anyway.
When I hit 13 I was allowed to get my first job (working in a butcher's shop cleaning up) and for me the whole point of getting a job was to get a boombox. So I save for what seemed like eons and could finally afford a low rent threepiecer. It was very bare bones on features, and it was a no-name brand. Ironically I've never seen one posted in anyones collection or any other online photos, but I hope to one day find another. This radio (I believe the brand was TDJ, or TCJ, something like that) did me well through my early teenage years and was my most prized possession (after my Star Wars figure collection) but being a cheapy it wasn't up to the amount of use I subjected it too and eventually the deck began to fail and I started looking for another box. By this time I was working more at the butcher shop and had enough income to by a much higher quality box and after carefully browsing stores and catalogues I found a lovely Philips that became my goal to own. This was another threepiecer (I never saw any decent sized onepiecers in all those years looking) and it had gorgeous design, Dolby, 3 band equalizer and a superb LED meter, which was then always the hallmark of quality audio (to me anyway). Here's the only pic I've ever found of it online:
I adored this box, played it day and night, recorded hundreds of songs of the radio, took it everywhere I went, played forever with detaching the speakers for optimal stereo separation, I even got my Dad to build a timber shelving unit for it that the main body could sit in with tape shelving underneath to make it look like a 'real' home stereo. My birthday after I bought the Philips I received a turntable for my main present, which opened up even more musical avenues for me. I began collecting 12inch singles and albums, I even bought a cheap Tandy/RadioShack mixer and attempted to cross fade and scratch with my turntable and another deck for the other source, which never seemed to work as well as I wished.
The Philips was my pride and joy for a few years and got throughly used one a daily basis. Unfortunately the record/pause had to be engaged for the line-in to work and due to me listening to and recording lots of vinyl it eventually broke and the deck became inoperable. My Dad tried to fix it to no avail, and that was that.
At this stage I was about 16 or so and bagan looking at buying home stereo gear and such, as most of us probably did and the idea of the boombox as my best friend faded. I was working more and I discovered thrash metal and death metal and became very active in that scene in my late teenage years. I did buy another cheap box in the early 90s though, a double deck mini that I used to record band rehearsals on and dub other bands demos and such. I did love that little radio, wish I still had her as she became covered in band stickers and was a well travelled little unit.
I'll skip forward about 8 years or and when I got my own place and began setting up a 'system' I bought a lot of nice hi fi equipment and built an expensive (for my income) system up. When this was complete I should have been happy, but listening to music on it just never 'gelled' for me, and I really wished I had a boombox again. This was about 1996 or so, and at that moment I decided I wanted another boombox and would try to get one, or possibly collect them. But I couldn't find a one anywhere, and other interests (...women) took my attention away from it and I gave up on having one again.
Then one day about 4 years ago I absolutely randomly searched for boombox on ebay and up came all these incredible listings of units I could but dream of as a kid. So I set about learning about them, found Stereo2Go, and educated myself on how to collect these lovely machines thanks to the shared knowledge from many people I didn't know then but who now count as friends. It was the community of collectors that taught me everything I knew, from seeing radios and working out what I liked to all the repairs and restoration. To this day I don't know how anyone could even try to collect boomboxes without having community resources like here.
That's my story, and I do apologise if I have posted this elsewhere before, I've feeling it's on here somewhere, and if not then on Stereo2Go possibly.
And if anyone's got one of those Philips Compo's please PM me if you want to move it on to a new home!!
Rock On.
I wonder how this all began....I know when we were dating, first married, and raising Lil Dog, we had narry a boombox, so it made me wonder where did they all come from? 
Not sure how all this really happened, but let's move on....
How did you begin collecting old school boomboxes? 
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Forgive the newbie post ... seems the mister has pointed out that this topics has been discussed and I should have searched the past threads 
