I had some 7971's from the late 60's from Poly Packs, back when the "ebay" of the day was the back pages of camera and electronics magazines. Yep, I wish that I had bought a bunch. Who knew?
In the case of the auction that was originally mentioned on eBay, I agree with a previous comment that there is some monkey-business going on with the seller and his supposed "bidders". I suppose that his idea is that if you make it look like something is in high demand at a high price, then it becomes a valuable reality. I do think that a great deal of the real nixie market actually lives on this forum and I give people credit for being smarter than that. The 7971 tubes have a going rate of $75 to $110 based on the last several years. There are a few outliers on each side of the price range but most are right in there. The current listing of $380 for two B7971's is from a couple "low count" and a zero history seller. They are either a scam or they are incredibly naive about how to throw away money. At that price, I have some to sell. The other interesting nixie is the Z586/Z5860. These are the nixies that Dalibor Farny has revived and we are seeing a few people trying to get $80 for defective tubes or $300+ for NOS. These were in the $150 -$200 range just a year ago and I don't think that they have suddenly gone short supply. I do think that the supply is limited but I also believe that there are a few vendors trying to drive up the price. It's not surprising that everyone has started to rediscover how cool nixie displays really are. There is no such thing as "too much" of the soft orange glow of a glass display tube! On Wednesday, March 27, 2019 at 10:48:10 AM UTC-5, gregebert wrote: > > I recall Poly-Paks selling 7971 units back in the mid 1970's; one of those > barrel deals where I guess they literally had barrels of these things. I > cant tell you how many times I've kicked myself in the face for not buying > any of them. I'm guessing most of these came from brokerage houses that > were updating their info boards for commodity trading. > > The day *will* come when large LED displays will become equally > valuable.... > > Let's face it, we're all a bit nuts when it come to vintage > electronics..........................Yesterday's garbage is tomorrow's gold. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/2f0bfda9-7383-4914-927e-5f36ad0bba10%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
