A BLAST FROM THE PAST!
I was sitting here thinking about the flat that we lived in when we were first married 56 years ago. I remembered our little radio that we bought for the kitchen. How I loved that radio. It was modern and different. Not a brown polished square wooden box, like all radios were up to that point. This one was pale green plastic. And had a sloping rounded back. No corners anywhere. I was so proud of this very modern piece of equipment. Whenever we’ve visited museums or exhibitions of days gone by, I’ve hoped that I would see it again, but never have. I remembered it was made by a company called Sobell, so I put Sobell into a Google search in the hopes that the Company was still going, and would perhaps tell me something about my little old radio from the past.
Sobel didn’t come up, but I did get the name of a place that specialised in selling and restoring old radio and record players etc. He had an email address so I wrote to tell him of my old love affair with a green plastic Sobell radio. I thought it might interest him. Imagine my amazement when I received a reply almost by return. This was what he wrote back:
Thanks for the note, ...I am fairly sure that
the radio you are describing was the Sobell 'Sobellette'
or Model 439, I have inserted a small picture below so
that you can confirm that this is what your radio looked
like.
Also by chance / fate I do have one of these somewhere
in my workshop, and from what I can remember it was a
pale green colour !!...Regretfully I haven't seen it for well
over 15 years, but my PC database still confirms that it is
out there somewhere.
Regretfully these small Bakelite radios, especially those
that were coloured, as against plain brown etc. are now
extremely desirable and command very high prices. I would
guess that the coloured versions of this set would command
about £100 Pounds in non working un-restored condition today,
and fully restored in perfect working order around £150 pounds.
I have no idea as to the condition or state of the set I have at
this time, apart from the fact that I know I have never restored it,
so it would certainly need to be restored before it would work
again satisfactorily.
It would also help if I knew where you are located, as these
Bakelite cabinets do not travel well!!.... They are extremely fragile,
and if you were interested at all then it is a set that would be better
collected than sent through the post or by Courier.
Let me know if this is the set you remember and if you wanted
me to try to locate it at some point.
Regards, Malcolm
I was sitting here thinking about the flat that we lived in when we were first married 56 years ago. I remembered our little radio that we bought for the kitchen. How I loved that radio. It was modern and different. Not a brown polished square wooden box, like all radios were up to that point. This one was pale green plastic. And had a sloping rounded back. No corners anywhere. I was so proud of this very modern piece of equipment. Whenever we’ve visited museums or exhibitions of days gone by, I’ve hoped that I would see it again, but never have. I remembered it was made by a company called Sobell, so I put Sobell into a Google search in the hopes that the Company was still going, and would perhaps tell me something about my little old radio from the past.
Sobel didn’t come up, but I did get the name of a place that specialised in selling and restoring old radio and record players etc. He had an email address so I wrote to tell him of my old love affair with a green plastic Sobell radio. I thought it might interest him. Imagine my amazement when I received a reply almost by return. This was what he wrote back:
Thanks for the note, ...I am fairly sure that
the radio you are describing was the Sobell 'Sobellette'
or Model 439, I have inserted a small picture below so
that you can confirm that this is what your radio looked
like.
Also by chance / fate I do have one of these somewhere
in my workshop, and from what I can remember it was a
pale green colour !!...Regretfully I haven't seen it for well
over 15 years, but my PC database still confirms that it is
out there somewhere.
Regretfully these small Bakelite radios, especially those
that were coloured, as against plain brown etc. are now
extremely desirable and command very high prices. I would
guess that the coloured versions of this set would command
about £100 Pounds in non working un-restored condition today,
and fully restored in perfect working order around £150 pounds.
I have no idea as to the condition or state of the set I have at
this time, apart from the fact that I know I have never restored it,
so it would certainly need to be restored before it would work
again satisfactorily.
It would also help if I knew where you are located, as these
Bakelite cabinets do not travel well!!.... They are extremely fragile,
and if you were interested at all then it is a set that would be better
collected than sent through the post or by Courier.
Let me know if this is the set you remember and if you wanted
me to try to locate it at some point.
Regards, Malcolm
He lives in Maidenhead!
Of course I had to write and thank him and tell him that I wasn’t in the market for buying a radio at that price. But I now have a picture of it. And I’m really thrilled. Do you know I described the radio that I hadn’t seen for about 50 years to this guy, and when he sent the picture it was spot on!
7 comments:
Well now, THAT'S interesting!
See, we told you you could come up with some good posts!
Wow Leeta I have not heard the name sobel for many years, in 1950 my mum and dad bought their first tv,it was a gray and red sobel.
I as a child did net remember the tear or make of the tv, but when mum died we found all the reciets for tv,s and other goodies thay had bought, and the sobel reciet was for January 1950.
yes it brings back memories.
Jeanette
That makes my hairs on my arms stand up! How lovely to see something again that meant so much to you, and what a nice chap he was.
Oh Leeta what fantastic luck you had. Fancy that chap having the exact radio and colour that you used to own, I wonder what the odds are on that ah?
Aaaaaaw, that actually brought tear to my eye! Do you know, I am going to hunt out mum's Cordon Bleu cooker range now. I know it was thiry years ago and not fifty, but it was a long time ago for me! I wonder if I can find it and I wonder if it will be the corrct one?....
Nope, I don't know enough about it. Perhaps mum can find it? My Nanny Flo even bought me a little plastic version that I loved so much. I remember it had all the knobs amd moving parts and even had a little set of saucpans. It could only have been about 12" high. I remember 'cooking' chocolate hundreds and thousands on it. Sigh.
I hope you do find it, it's such a lovely warm feeling when you set eyes on something that you haven't seen for years. Like seeing yopur feet for he first time in nine months! (you'll know what I mean)
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