If you are looking for something on the unusual side, check out these 25 Vintage Electronics items offered this week No Reserve from Radioorphanage. 

These will be our last set of auctions until September!

For 2024 we started an eBay Store with Many Buy it Now offerings of some of our best items. These items are Unique, 2nique, Exceptional, Museum Quality, or the Best on this Planet. 

There are about 25 Fixed Price Buy It Now offerings available

Guaranteed you will see things here you never saw before in your life!

I wish 2024 to be better for you than 2023 was. 

Face it, the only things that really matter are God, Friends & Family, and your Health.

Best, Radioorphanage

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The 2^nd Transistor Radio- 1955 RED Raytheon 8TP-4 Seven Transistor Radio -Serviced

Private Stock from my Personal Collection

This Rare, 1955 Raytheon Early Transistor Radio was the next transistor radio offered after the Regency TR-1.

You will search the rest of your life to find another RED one of this set!!

You’ll easily find 2 dozen Regency TR-1s before you find another RED 8TP-4!

This is my last Raytheon 8TP, and I’m sad to see it go, but I’ve enjoyed it for a long time, and now someone else will have the chance to enjoy it.

It was known as “The First Serious Transistor Radio” after Consumer Reports April '55 review of the Regency TR-1 found the $49.95 TR-1 to be "a toy-like novelty which didn't come at a toy-like price", and stated that, "the consumer who has been waiting for transistor radios to appear would do well to await further developments before buying."
This Raytheon 8TP-4 is in exceptional, if not MUSEUM QUALITY condition.

Raytheon (Lights of the Gods), being a Government Contractor, was truly the “Over Achiever” of the Early USA Transistor Radio Suppliers!

They made this smaller 8TP4 first in 1955, and followed it up in 1956 with the larger T-2500 using the same 7RT chassis.

This 69 year old, 9” x 3” x 7”, USA hand wired transistor radio truly had no competition with its 7 “Plug in” transistors and large 5” speakers. Note that the original speaker was replaced at some time in the past.

I’ve easily seen over 100 Regency TR-1s, but I’ve seen less than a dozen of these Raytheon sets and I owned 7 or 8 of them in other colors through the years. This is the only RED one I’ve ever personally seen.

I always kept this one because it was the best, and only one without corrosion all over the battery terminals.

This one is in GREAT physical shape! It has only slight corrosion on 1 of the 8 battery terminals, which trust me is unheard of!!

Most of these battery terminals are corroded beyond repair.

All 7 transistors appear to be original RAYTHEON transistors.

Check out those EARLY RAYTHEON TRANSISTORS!

I recently took this to my Tech Friend Tom and he replaced 13 capacitors, but unfortunately could not get the set to work. Tom will admit right off that he is a “TUBE GUY” and doesn’t like to work on transistor sets. Hopefully you or someone you know can bring this set back to its original glory!

This is truly an iconic early transistor radio.

If you are looking for an early transistor radio that is not in other people’s collections, this is it! 

The cabinet could use a very light cleaning to really POP, but I’ll leave that up to you. It's not that I'm lazy, but most people like them showing some age, and those who like them looking almost new usually enjoy cleaning them to the level they prefer.

This set comes with an original ad from 1955.

As my radio collector friend Harvey says “Find me another set- Period!”

From the Net (Bob Davidson): Why is the 8TP series referred to as the first "serious" transistor radio? And who referred to it that way?

Obviously Regency didn't. For Regency, and for most collectors today as well, the first "serious" transistor radio was the first transistor radio: the Regency TR-1. Even if its 4-transistor circuit performed more poorly than any tube portable of the day, the TR-1 still was a qualitative break from anything preceding it..

But at the advent of transistor radios in the mid-'50s, Raytheon was able to brand its lunchbox-sized 8TP series model as the first "serious" transistor radio by virtue of the 8TP's performance -- and, by contrast, the Regency TR-1's lack of performance. The Raytheon 8TP was the second transistor radio on the market and not the first quite likely because Raytheon took the time to make a quality radio.

The April and July 1955 issues of Consumer Reports separately put these two radios to the test, and concluded that Raytheon had every reason to call its 8TP the first serious transistor radio. The April '55 review of the Regency TR-1 found the $49.95 TR-1 to be "a toy-like novelty which didn't come at a toy-like price", and stated that, "the consumer who has been waiting for transistor radios to appear would do well to await further developments before buying."

The July '55 review of the Raytheon 8TP gave the set high marks: "The transistors in this set have not been used in an effort to build the smallest radio on the market, and good performance has not been sacrificed to attain this end." The 8TP series was ranked high in nearly all categories, "falling down only in sensitivity." Audio quality matched or exceeded that of many of the tube portables covered in the review, with speech intelligibility found to be especially good. Characteristically, the Consumers Union's highest praise came for the Raytheon's battery economy. Operating at about 1/6 cent per hour, it was many times more efficient than any other portable available. Regency's TR-1, by comparison, cost about forty times as much in battery usage, and one Arvin tube set reviewed ate its batteries at a rate of 22 cents per hour -- more than a hundred times that of the Raytheon 8TP. Comparing the 8TP to an RCA tube portable, Consumer Reports wrote: "The Raytheon has a high initial cost (about $80 compared to $50 for the RCA Victor 6-BX-63), but the RCA will consume about $38 worth of batteries by the time the Raytheon has used up its 60 cents worth of flashlight cells." There could hardly have been a better endorsement for the 8TP series than this, and over the following year subsequent reviews would find that most new transistor sets approached the 8TP's battery economy, and that the Raytheon really was more unique for being a good performing portable radio which also happened to be a transistor radio.

Bid Now, and Bid Strong. Speaking of no reserve, check out the other 25 unique auctions this week by Radioorphanage- Many are 100+ years old and New in Box- New Old Stock!!!

Then check our New eBay Store with MANY Excellent Buy It Now Offerings. Good Luck!

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