About to abandon side gig

[Wallythacker]

Well, first I have to admit by trading I have the radio gear I mostly want and the bottom line will be good when done.

We're not talking a fortune but in a year I guess I have turned $40k in amateur radio gear. Out of that I get to keep about $10k worth of quality stuff. Damage to my back account, about $2500 to the good.

But sheer idiocy. One guy I just spent a fair bit of time with laying out all the components I have for a popular line of antennas called Hustlers. He has an ad, long running IIRC, asking for systems made by Hustler.

So I laid out to him my kit (quite good and anyone would be pleased to own the whole kit) only for him to respond he was interested, if he could CHERRY PICK. Imagine that, he wanted the impossible to get parts I had and pay me 1960's prices. It's actually funny. I would be left with a pole, a few feet of coax and one resonator for a band that's barely active at the best of times. LOL.

Another guy would email me literally every day to ask me if I had dropped the price on a specific radio as it did not sell that day. This went on for close to a month. Every day, email from buddy asking me if the price dropped as the radio wasn't moving. I had no witty reply for this guy but I thought, he must have a serious interest for emailing me daily.

Finally, about day 25 he makes an offer of literally 50% of my asking price. That is an outright insult in this world. In a flash a brilliant reply hit my brain, "I suggest if you don't like my price you buy one of the non-existent identical radios on {SITE REDACTED} to mine." Funny enough, I never heard from him again after that. I do suspect he got a straw buyer for the radio. It went to the same town as his, the offer came in 2 days after the email, and I never saw a wanted ad from him again.

I have a ton of additional stories of all stripes. I know I won't quit, I do have fun occasionally and get to play with expensive radios and other equipment I would never consider buying for myself.

I used to trade in guitars in the 70/80's then got out for a bit and when I got back in 63 stratocasters had gone from $1000 to $30000. Too rich for my blood.

[Johnny Mullet]

Radio gear ain't cheap, but the Chinese exports coming out are making older radios obsolete.

[Wallythacker]

Radio gear ain't cheap, but the Chinese exports coming out are making older radios obsolete.

That is so true. I'm about to buy a Chinese RS 918 and for $400 CDN it is absolutely the very best lower power (QRP) radio the world has ever seen. Now, you can argue the Chinese stole a design and the inventors are being ripped off but the radio is OPEN SOURCE meaning anyone is free to use the design, make changes, sell clones and the inventors are not entitled to anything.

Contrast this to the Japanese Icom 705 which for $1800 CDN does as much as the 918 and then goes on to do more. It is a closed design, invented and owned by Icom. Icom has to charge enough to recover the costs incurred in inventing, developing, manufacturing and marketing and supporting the radio.

In my case there is no way I will spend 4x as much for the more or less same functionality. But when my choice is an expensive Japanese radio that has no Chinese contemporaries or no radio I'll spend the money for the expensive Japanese one.