Unreal prices


Watching a YouTube video about receiver wars of 1970 piqued my interest so I checked eBay.

Pioneer SX-1950 going for $5000 plus.

My lowly SX-1050 going for $1700.

Those prices, with deflation to the 70s, are list prices back then.  Kept their value. 😀
128x128ibmjunkman
If those items are in good condition and good working order they have a lot of features built in that would be costly to replicate today if desired. Also they have lots of lights, look cool, and are collectors items. Unique items. Probably capable of sounding better than ever today with other modern gear on the system.  $5000 for a Pioneer receiver is pretty steep though still. 
Eve even back in the 70s, there were MANY better performing amps/receivers than the Pioneers. 

Its the uneducated that are driving up the prices on those units! But have at it! As long as they continue to OVER VALUE those Japanese units, they’ll UNDERVALUE  the real performers of the time!

The blissful ignorance of those buyers has been a godsend for me! Stay ignorant! 

Fortunately, there will always be those who chase glitz or join the chase for whatever everyone else is chasing! Technics, Marantz, Sansui, have at it!!


"Its the uneducated that are driving up the prices on those units!"
Why uneducated? People want what they like.

It is not ignorance. It is a blissful ability to buy what one wants.
Old and rare and durable are nice. IF not since supplanted by objectively superior products. Only discontinued legends I would crave are non-electronic, and almost all non-mechanical. The exception would be Mouli manual tin rotary cheese grater. When it comes to grating the Parm, steel sucks, stannum rules. All others are kitchen and garden hand tools not since matched or replicated, much less exceeded. You'd have to pay me to take an old Pioneer receiver. Put it in an effing museum.   

Pioneer had some of the cleaner looking receivers, design-wise, and great FM stereo receiver performance...their separate tuners are pretty classic, but like most of the Japanese products from the mid-70s, the integrateds & receivers' preamps were not up to the amps IME.  An H-K 930 sounded better than the equivalent Sony, Pioneer or Sansui of the day.  But consistency and reliability went the other way.  Yamaha and Tandberg made better balanced, better sounding stuff than most of the "usual suspects"...all this before "high end" audio was created by Mark Levinson and ARC.