Western Electric 300B's 5 cents/lb

[roberts67]

I was talking with a friend last night about his tube stash that is too large to fit in his house. He was telling me how he bought 5 pallets of tubes from the phone company for 5 cents a pound in the 80's when they were getting rid of their tubes. He was the only bidder. Lots of strange tubes for telephone use. 6 matched pairs of Western Electric 300b's with paper still on them along with a bunch of 6550's, etc. I about fell out of my chair! I dream of these kind of deals. Robert

 

[Wazz]

You gotta post stuff like that just to kill the rest of us, don't you?!

 

[gogofast]

:drool:

 

[vendo81]

I bought most of the really good tubes that I now have in the mid to late 1980's for almost nothing. A NOS matched pair of Genalex KT66 tubes sold for $30-$40.
I don't remember seeing alot of Western Electric tubes...even in the 80's. Although the WE tubes were much less expensive back then I never saw any at that incredible price. Your friend did really well :yes:

 

[cooljjay]

Yeh things like that happened back then, but I can't complain about missing the auction as I wasn't born yet

 

[gogofast]

I bought most of the really good tubes that I now have in the mid to late 1980's for almost nothing. A NOS matched pair of Genalex KT66 tubes sold for $30-$40.
I don't remember seeing alot of Western Electric tubes...even in the 80's. Although the WE tubes were much less expensive back then I never saw any at that incredible price. Your friend did really well :yes:

back then, some of the older folks around here told me, truck loads of high end tube gears were sold at price of used diapers.

 

[Duane]

I was talking with a friend last night about his tube stash that is too large to fit in his house. He was telling me how he bought 5 pallets of tubes from the phone company for 5 cents a pound in the 80's when they were getting rid of their tubes. He was the only bidder. Lots of strange tubes for telephone use. 6 matched pairs of Western Electric 300b's with paper still on them along with a bunch of 6550's, etc. I about fell out of my chair! I dream of these kind of deals. Robert

That was the practice back then. The employess were not allowed to aquire any of the stock that was being retired, but they were sold off to "appropriate" vendors for pennies on the dollar. I know, because we had lockers full off these in boxes,never used and in perfect shape. They all had a fiber type protective paper sleeve wrapped around them and then in the standard Western Electric blue and white boxes.