Hobbies And Interests
Earliest Radios
The development of radio coincided with World War I, and it was only after the war, when the U.S. government released its radio patents, that commercial radio was born. The earliest sets, both manufactured and homemade, were open crystal models set up on a "breadboard." They required no batteries or electricity, instead receiving very strong signals from local stations through a coil of copper wire. They had no amplification and could only be listened to through headphones. These early crystal radios are very rare but aren't considered particularly collectible because they are so simple and utilitarian.
Roaring Twenties
The introduction in the middle 1920s of amplifying vacuum tubes gave the then-nascent radio industry a significant boost. Radios could now broadcast to an entire room full of people, and commercial radio stations proliferated, broadcasting live news reports, band concerts and plays. The tubes and other inner workings of radios were encased in cabinets of wood and, later, plastic. And as the radio moved from the hobby room into the living room, designers worked hard to make radios fit in with the typical room's decor. By the 1930 there were large floor wooden floor models and smaller, tear-shaped "cathedral" radios, also of wood, for the tabletop.
Golden Age of Radio
The 1930s and pre-television 1940s are considered the golden age of radio, but not just because broadcast radio had become a huge industry that touched virtually every home in the United States. It was also the era when radio designers sought to outdo each other with bold, daring and compelling designs. Much of this had to do with the development of plastic. Table radios, according to the book "Radios: The Golden Age," were among the first goods to be made of plastic. The first plastic radio cabinet was built in 1931 for Kadette. Early plastic radios were generally made of Bakelite, a resin formed with a wood-flour filler. They were either left in their natural dark-brown color or painted. Later models, the ones really prized by collectors because of their embrace by Art Deco designers, were made of catalin, a cast Bakelite plastic without the filler. Catalin is transparent and was easily dyed or marbled, but it was prone to cracking, which is why so few catalin sets remain today. Between the late 1920s and early 1940s, there were more than 600 radio manufacturers in the United States alone, with names like Fada and Emerson.
Transistor Radios
Although radios from the 1920s through the 1940s are considered the most collectable, with some ornate catalin models selling for upward of $1,000, according to 2009 auction prices, transistor radios from the late 1950s and early 1960s have recently come into vogue as a collectable as well. Early Japanese transistor radios are prized by collectors, as are novelty models in the shapes of cars, airplanes, characters (from Hopalong Cassidy to Mickey Mouse) and other objects.