Valve Collection - What to Keep?

Hi,

I've mentioned here before that my late-father was into electronics (he was a wireless tech. in WW2 and continued afterwards building TVs, repairing radios, etc.). Over the years he amassed a fairly sizeable collection of valves (tubes). Before he passed away we catalogued them. I've currently got them in storage (along with a ton of other stuff). Most are "radio" valves.

I'm thinking of selling them as a bulk lot but I'd like to keep any that would be useful if I ever get around to building some valve studio gear. As I play guitar I plan on keeping any guitar-related valves like 12AX7s, EL34s, rectifiers, etc. too. I'm not as familiar with studio gear so I'm looking for suggestions as to which ones to keep.

Any suggestions?

Cheers,

Chris

There's no real sense in us trying to guess what you have and what you'd want.

I'd say hold onto them for a while, until you have a better idea of what you want for yourself.

Tubes does not take up that much space, and value will probably only increase with time...

Jakob E.

Another option is to look at popular tube gear and see what tubes are used.  For example LA-2A, Pultec, Sta-Level, UA 175, Fairchild 660, etc.  You know that anything in those units is worth keeping.  If you expect to have any early tube gear with all octal tubes, look at early RCA, Altec, Gates, etc. schematics.

Why not make a detailed list of them all and present that list on the "black market" on this forum and see what sells?

It seems like there are a lot of people here that constantly are looking for NOS tubes of different sort.

best regards

/John

I recently had the same thing to deal with, someone had died leaving old radio and TV valves.

I carefully cleaned them up (don't rub off the numbers!) and identified them using radiomuseum and other sites, (put in the valve number followed by radiomuseum, their own search facility doesn't work) I then sold them on EBay individually and made £300.  If you sell them off as a job lot then a dealer will buy them and take your profit.

Don't try to test them other than to make sure that the heater filaments are intact with a resistance meter.  Sell as a used item and Europe/UK only, my advice is to not sell to Chinese buyers.

DaveP