After being minimally involved in radio collecting the last decade, Ive gotten more involved recently and it appears the collecting scene has changed drastically. It is my impression there are much fewer brand collectors around now, so lets have some fun and see. You can vote more than once

I drifted into collecting 3 brands : Scotts, McMurdos and 1 each of the other high end brands as an example of their best.

It's taken a few years but I've narrowed my interests down a bit, to 1930s sets; of those, I've taken to curating the General Household Utilities (Grunow) models on the Radiomuseum and buying appropriately-priced unrestored sets from them to work on.

In general, though, I've really cut back my radio purchasing - I don't bother touching consoles with under 10 tubes at this point, and other than Grunow radios, 7 tubes on a tabletop. I'm much more interested in interesting circuitry than anything else.

My collection is always changing. I buy, I sell, the more I like a radio or it's features, the longer it is apt to stay around. but I don't like to pay more than $25 for a radio of any kind cause I'm cheap!

I'm kinda all over the board. My oldest radio is a 1930. My newest is a 1963. I have radios, TV's, and Phono's. From a Cathedral to an Transoceanic. From a Scott to a Silvertone. From an RCA TS-830 to a Sylvania Sylouette. From a New Orthophonic 45 player to a console New Orthophonic. From a GE P870 (2) to a Royal 3000-1.

I buy what I like. I very seldom pick up anything just because it's cheap. But if I like it and it's cheap, different story. I have a little bit of everything. More consoles than anything else though. I'm way more picky than I used to be but I still managed to acquire too much stuff.

I am more interested in a style or characteristic...for example, tombstones with 10 tubes or more. Or, radios with chrome grilles. The makers are not as important.

Peter

I think my signature says it all.

-Steve

Anything and everything, as long as it's small enough to fit in my 750 sq. foot apt!;)-Gearhead

My current Avatar (cropped from a Zenith dealer catalog showing a Zenith serviceman's uniform) says it all. I not only collect the radio brand, but the advertising, ephemera, correspondence, photographs, shipping cartons, employee memorabilia, uniforms, history of the corporation, its staff, its distributors, and its dealers. I also tend to limit my collection to before the mid 1950s.

I started out in 1988 collecting any brand, pre-WWII, but I began to focus on one brand after a couple of years. Dwelling obsessively on this hobby is not a requirement, but it helps...

Martin, that is a cool quest you have I guess my thoughts on that for you is how much has the stream of products dried up, here in 2012...? I guess the odds of finding fresh or barn finds is less, and it gets down to buying and selling from other guys collections, you think? Thanks.

Zeniths mostly. Few other nice sets dad and I picked up along the way.

My grandfather had a 1938 Zenith 12-S-267 brand new (another family member still has it.....someday I hope to get it.......it would mean alot to me)......so I guess Zenith runs in my family. Have maybe 20 or 25 of them now. They keep finding me!!!!

Lenny

Like everyone does, when I first started collecting I bought just about every old radio I saw. I finally figured out that I needed to concentrate on a smaller segment of the hobby. I decided to only collect Zenith and Crosley. Well, there were too many of them out there so I cut it down to only Crosley. I still have a bunch of Zeniths but I don't buy them any more. I usually sell about 15-20 radios at our Convention (VRPS) auctions and only buy a couple. Except for novelty radios. I probably have 300 of them- my wife likes them . She also likes Plaskon and catalin sets so I have about 100 of them. Gotta keep Mama happy so she won't complain about the ones I buy. If other brands catch my eye and are cheap enough I buy em. So now I have (approx) about 200 Crosleys and somewhere around 800 radios total. Not sure exactly how many because many of them are in storage and I haven't seen some of them in years. My intention is to buy some land where I can have a big building where I can display my radios- a museum. If I live long enough I will do it ( of course I might have to live to be very very old.
Randy James

Here's another one who bought just about everything he saw, but I've curbed
my appetite now, and have to do some thinning-out to the most interesting sets.
That is, wood cabinets interesting in design or circuits interesting in design. Or
both. But the interest is not limited to any one brand. And I really only have a
couple dozen... well, maybe thirty... well, maybe...
Eleven of them are not-small consoles.
Nelson

For me it is looks and technology. So, mine go from 1930 to 1970-ish, more table tops, than consoles, though that is slowly changing... And I play everything I have repaired/ restored.

It's a quandary for me, because I love late '30s style consoles, but I'm interested technologically in early FM. Finding late-40's FM sets that have half decent styling is the pits... only the units that looked a decade behind the times need apply.

This prolly applies to many of us, and certainly to me.

My collection consists of primarily tube and Transistor portables, although I also have about two dozen AA5/6 table sets as well.

I collect certain brands and models because of their styling, with the multiples based on the different colors they came in. I prefer early '50's tube, and early American Transistor sets.

When I resumed the radio hobby a few years ago I went crazy over Philcos; that slowly faded out and transitioned into Atwater Kents along with early Grebe's and Kennedy's. While keeping the breadboards and scarce and rare 1920's models, I began adding top-of-the-line and technically advanced pre-war models. With the exception of an RCA AR-88 and a BC-348, I stick with pre-1937 high-end and high tech table top radios. I guess it puts me in the technical and scarce model collection categories.

Pete AI2V

These are good times for beginning collectors, I see many pre war sets at price levels lower than when I was heavily buying 25 years ago. Many good cathedrals and tombstones are at levels I couldnt dream of when I was adding them to my collection. However for the advanced collector who is reducing or changing their collection it is not so good. I am going to have to sell some sets I never dreamed would fall so low in price at significant losses, unless of course I get a Radio Attic account!

I should of added in my original post I went through the same evolution most do. I ended up collecting Pilots, VEFs, cathedrals, Russian sets, Export high tube count tombstones and recently have taken advantage of the low prices to add a couple more to the fold.

The online resources now a days are incredible, before the internet radio collecting was hard work.

I do need to do a significant reduction though or build another building.

great thread thanks to the responders.

I suppose it could be what were exposed to early on what drives our interests.

I started off with two Zeniths and a Pre-War FM Crosley. Then I found another Zenith, then another.
My family used Zenith products and I got my first real job part-time after school working for a Zenith-only dealer/service TV shop. This later turned into a full time job which lasted 12-13 years. I became a rather good salesman because I was so enthusiastic about Zenith products!

The Crosley 22CA (and a Zenith 9H079) spurred my interest in prewar FM, but it wasn't until later my interest in Sparton formed.
I picked up a model 750 Equasonne which is a beautiful large radio. I looked at the Technidyne schematic and was completely astounded that such a design could even work!

Once restored, I was impressed with its performance!
I soon found out what an interesting company Sparton was and persued their radios.
Though, I'm not much interested in the mirrored models. They just don't do enough for me considering the prices they bring.

I'm more interested in the technology behind them first. The history behind them second, then the cosmetics/designs third.


-Steve

A lot of mine are Philcos. Mostly table radios, except for two transistor ones which are the same ones like I had when I was a kid. The only console I own is a German Korting, which was my grandfather's. He also gave me his 1941 Philco (41-226) "sled" table radio, and another 1942 (42-345) table radio that was my step-great grandfather's . Since then, I've bought quite a collection of Philcos, portable and table models. But, I also own a GE tombstone from 1935, a DeWald portable, and the RCA BP-10 portable.

So for me it's mostly the Philco brand, because it brings back the most memories of my youth. But, there are the transistor Toshibas and Channel Masters as well! It seemingly never ends. Radios are much like Lay's potato chips...you can't only have just one!