Radios from the local tip

[Station X]

The subject of obtaining items from recycling centres has been discussed at length many times in the forums.

Some councils for example Suffolk County Council do not allow items to be removed from their recycling centres. On the other hand some councils such as Cambridge County Council sell items to members of the public, but not electrical goods. Essex County Council state that members of the public visiting their centres can swop items between themselves at centres so long as they haven't been put onto a skip, bin etc.

I don't think we need any more discussion of the merits, or otherwise of not selling stuff. You could try taking it up with your local council, but it would undoubtedly be a waste of time.

It would be useful to know which recycling centres, if any, sell on electrical goods to the public.

[kalee20]

I did see an old amplifier at the Ilfracombe tip a couple of years ago, barely worth taking but I asked anyway. "Sorry, no," was the answer, "but you can have the valves at 50p each." So I did - nothing remarkable, 6X5, 6J7, 6F6 ��.

[turretslug]

Well, even mundane audio-type valves will only appreciate... It saved them the inevitable and likely imminent need to clear up slivers of broken glass, they hung onto the copper and steel bits and added a few bob to the kitty. Win-win.

[dhunt52]

An old TV was salvaged today courtesy of my new Romanian friend.
Looks like it has been used as a plant pot stand.

Plus a Sobell radio which I don't really want, but if I had refused it, he may not offer me anything else in the future. I can't take anything back either for obvious reasons.

[robin coleman]

Oh I wish I was near you I wd have the sobel
Regards
Robin

[Herald1360]

That was the first telly we ever had! Second hand in about 1960.

Never knew it had EF50s in it though- it was before my first forays into electronics.

[hamid_1]

Nice find!

That old television is a Bush TV11A from 1948-1950 (the 'A' in the model number indicates it was made to receive transmissions from Alexandra Palace in London. There was a 'B' model for use in Birmingham.) It must be worth £50 at least. A bit more info here: http://freespace.virgin.net/andy.valve/tv11a.htm

It's definitely worth getting friendly with the guys who work at your local tip.

The policy at our household waste site has changed from time to time. When I first started scavenging regularly in 1999, you could have pretty much have anything you wanted if you slipped the guy a fiver or a tenner. In 2009 they stopped members of the public from buying electrical items, even installed CCTV cameras to enforce the rule. Now in the last year or so, they've opened a shop on the site. They sell mostly household furniture and bric-a-brac, but also electrical items that have been PAT tested. At last, it is now possible to buy them legitimately. The problem is that unlike in the old days, the staff don't get cash in their back pocket, the shop gets it. So there's less incentive for them to rescue stuff, but it can be done. If you really want an item you've seen at the dump, one of the workers can put it in the shop for you, then you can buy it.

One of the people who worked there, whom I've known for some years, told me last year that the shop sold a wooden Marconiphone television (don't know what model). He also said he removed a PX4 valve from a radiogram and sold it - untested - for £80 online. So at least some vintage stuff is being rescued. I rarely go to the dump these days and haven't found anything exciting recently, but at least there is hope.

[Phil G4SPZ]

dhunt52, you have a PM regarding the Sobell radio.

[dhunt52]

Phil, you have a reply..... yours for what I gave the man, but you'll have to collect it from me.

[Andrew2]

That Marconiphone tape recorder revived some happy memories! In 1968/9 me and a couple of friends got into tape recording and two us purchased the Ferguson version (the 3224 IIRC). Mine lasted about 10 years before the motor went kaput and off it went to the tip. My mate kept his, but it was shoved in his attic for many years before he retrieved it to go through some old tapes. Needless to say it was not happy!
Although he is a wiz with advanced electronics (he works for a major research/defence firm) he has no idea when it comes to consumer stuff, so he brought it up from his home in Southend for me to fix. These recorders have a superb deck (made by BRC themselves I think) and apart from having to remove, clean and lubricate the alloy reel-table shifters (what are they really called?) it was in fairly good nick. A couple of belts and a general clean & lube of all bearings had it working a treat. The electronics were fine. When he came up the next time he brought a stack of tapes and I spent the next few weeks transferring old off-the-radio Kenny Everett shows etc onto digital format for him. He tells me the old Ferguson is still working well. They were a well-built machine. Sorry about the reminiscing!

[mark_in_manc]

Originally Posted by dhunt52

...which I don't really want, but if I had refused it, he may not offer me anything else in the future. I can't take anything back either for obvious reasons...

Well done - but that really made me laugh! Are you familiar with the children's story 'the magic porridge pot'?

[dazaaa1]

A lot of people don't realise that there is a HUGE market for used electricals in African countries. People fill containers with crt tv's, plasmas. desktop computers, dvd players, hifi's and fridges, not to be burned and have the copper extracted from them, but to be repaired and resold. The people who ship this stuff buy it, and everything from kettles to chest freezers command decent money for the scrap dealers who usually pick it up off the street or manage to divert it from recycling centres. For example, a silver crt tv 20" and up is worth a tenner, the smaller ones £7, a non working (but intact) plasma/lcd is worth 30/40 depending on the size and even fridge compressors are a fiver. I know that most of the tv's ending up a council sites are collected by contracted companies who are meant to destroy them but individuals have found ways to get stuff out of the lorries and sold to exporters. Considering they probably pick up 100 lcd's a week on average, at £30 a pop who wouldn't stop them from being destroyed? Luckily i'm good friends with everyone at my tip and have free roam of the place, always saving the hifi gear, radios and turntables that come in.
I'm pretty sure the reason some places flat out refuse to sell stuff to the public is because they already have buyers for anything they can sell, realistically no one is going to turn down money for free unless they know they can get more from someone else (using the revox mentioned earlier as an example, unless you saw it crushed I bet it was fished out of the bin and sold to a regular buyer later on)

[Tazman1966]

Originally Posted by dhunt52

...An old TV was salvaged today courtesy of my new Romanian friend.
Looks like it has been used as a plant pot stand...

Be a little bit careful not to identify the tip - sorry recycling centre (!) so as not to get your friend into trouble.

You're very lucky though. I try never to visit the local dump here in St Albans as the number of items of unobtainable and untouchable vintage kit that I've seen since the rules changed makes me want to weep

[avocollector]

How about the old literature, mags, manuals etc over in the UK?? - here in NZ these things are often shot down to the local tip by the family when an enthusiast passes over.

[Phil G4SPZ]

Friends and acquaintances, who know of my interest in vintage radio, bypass the tip on the way to my house. This can be a double-edged sword, as some irreparable stuff tends to arrive. One such was a very cheap and tatty Bush radio-cassette 'boom box' that had been left next to a cooker and had melted. So it went into the junk pile awaiting my next visit to the tip...

I was repairing a Murphy AM/FM portable yesterday which had an open-circuit 92mm diameter 'speaker. I could find nothing like it for sale online, but in a flash of inspiration I remembered the melted Bush, which yielded two perfect and identical 'speakers, as well as a working cassette mechanism and a telescopic antenna.

So, ironically, a scrap Bush has helped repair an ailing Murphy, which goes to show that throwing old radios away is Rank stupidity

[mark pirate]

I always strip all useful parts from scrap sets before they head to the tip, those tatty boom boxes can often provide many good parts.
Aerials, power supplies, speakers and cassette deck parts being particularly useful.

Mark

[G6Tanuki]

I always look over anything being thrown-out by friends just in case it contains anything usable: for example, old 1990s-era PCs often have a small 8- or 16-ohm loudspeaker of about 3 inches diameter which can be used in small transistor-radios. I also salvage the ferrite cores from any faulty SMPS as - stripped of their windings - they make great anti-RFI chokes to thread on to wall-wart type DC cables on RF-noisy TVs, set-top-boxes, laptops etc.

There's a limit to what I save though, if only for reasons of space.

[JStrummer]

Aye, I actually work at a recycling centre and you wouldn't believe what people throw away.
40 odd inch Samsung lcd tvs n the like, most working perfectly.
But if I was caught taking it I'd be out the door. Always get people asking for stuff, usually outa WEEE or TV containers but we just canna do it, or I'd be binned. It does make you feel bad but there's always someone watching, and now we have CCTV cameras onsite. As someone mentioned, if someone is about to take something outa their vehicle n someone else asks for it I'll quietly tell the dumper to leave the thing outside so the guy can pick it up. No rules broken! One guy on other site made a fortune doing car boot sales. Until the bosses stuck in a sneaky wee hidden camera n caught him loading up his van at end of the day! Bye bye! Shame, but he'd been at it for 25 years!!

[Oldcodger]

JS- I do know what folks throw away. SIL works at local recycling centre and ANYTHING IS AVAILABLE, and even better, the recycling centre has a shop to sell on stuff. Might be somewhere else for seekers of old tech to look for goodies. perhaps even the "recycling places" might be prevailed on to stop sending old radios/TV to the crusher, and sell them back. Thing that ALWAYS makes me laugh is sign outside local recycling centres "IT IS AN OFFENCE TO REMOVE ITEMS FROM THESE PREMISES" ---WELL- all there is inside is stuff folk have thrown away = junk.

[Herald1360]

Yes, but legally as soon as the chucker has chucked it, it becomes the property of whoever owns the bin it's chucked into. So removing it is stealing from whoever that is. The law doesn't (in principle) care whether it's worth a ha'penny or a fortune, it's still theft.