On Mon, 14 Dec 2009 23:22:03 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

In article ,
Don Pearce wrote:
Interesting insight into the way things were in the 60s - I've just
been reading a Wireless World from November of that year. Valves
(tubes for those across the pond) were extremely cheap. And
transistors cost pretty much the same, which is why we treated them
with kid gloves and thermal shunts when soldering them into circuits.

http://www.soundthoughts.co.uk/look/valves.jpg

Money conversion for the young and foreign:

20 shillings to the pound, 12 pence to the shilling. A price given as
5/6 meant five shillings and six pence. So an ECC84 at 6/6 is 32.5
pence in today's money. A 28012 transistor, by contrast at 140/- is
seven pounds - getting on for half the weekly wage of some people back
then.

I may post some ads for complete equipment later, just to make you
cry.

Prices of transistors were dropping rapidly even then. I paid 7/6 for a
red spot (OC71 reject) in '59.

That was cheap, I remember paying something around thirty shillings
for a working one. Sinclair used to buy bags of rejects for nearly
nothing, go through them with a meter to find any that had even a tiny
amount of residual gain then sell them.

d