The local SK ham that I have been talking about, has family members who are ready to divide his estate.
My X cousin - cousin , is advising them how much to sell his possessions for.
The problem is - my cousin works for a large container company and makes very decent money, so money to him is just a number.
The value of the possessions are not exactly top dollar, but the equipment was good stuff - although some if not most of it was broke at one time or another and repaired by other hams and not sent back for service.
One of the items up for sale is a Ameritron 600 watt amplifier.
Truthfully, this guy had so many antenna's on his roof and in his yard, he didn't need a amplifier to talk anywhere he wanted.
My cousin told them to sell it for $600 and that was what he was asking sight unseen.
They are going by Ebay prices and not actual value for the stuff they are trying to get rid of.
The one other item was his good HFrig - a Yaesu FT 950 with mic for $1200 smackers. The radio is probably 5 or more years old and they don't want to throw in the power supply.
I knew the guy, and he had just bought a new power supply, so there is probably something wrong with the old power supply. He had cancer and he bought ham radio equipment right up until the day he died. The truth is - he died because he couldn't afford his medicine - but he always found the money to buy ham radio stuff.
The MSRP is only about $1450 for the radio with no extra's.
I asked if the external speaker went with the radio and the answer was NO - get your own.
It isn't exactly my dream radio - but it would make a decent radio - if the price was right. Unfortunately I just started a new job and I am only bringing in $8.25 a hour. So I have to work a lot of hours - just to make up what I am going to spend to buy this stuff.
My pay this week was only $285.00 - so I'm not exactly pooping nickels here.
I guess to a person that makes $1000 a week take home, these prices are just chicken feed and he is trying to help the family out to cover the burial expenses.
The other thing was - he had several sections of used Rohn 25 tower - painted and ready to be put up, which tells you that the galvanize was gone. They want $65 per each 10' section.
I might be crazy, but I'm not dumb. I bought lot's of tower - even off the guy that is brokering the deal - for $10 a section.
I think that sometimes when a person dies and they were a ham and had a lot of stuff that the family gets dollar signs.
The other thing is - I don't know if my X cousin is trying to make a couple of bucks on the deal by picking it up himself and bringing it home and then reselling it at a higher price to compensate him for what he is doing and what he wants out of the estate.
There is a lot of dirty pool that goes on - on these types of deals.
I'm not a grave robber, but I know if I can buy a brand new radio for $1400 - with a warranty, why buy a used one for $1200 that has issues.
We had a little fight right before he died. I hit the mic button one time to check in on a net when I was trying out his radio and the mic burned up. When he took it apart, he had several layers of clear scotch tape over the contacts and it was burning through the tape and arcing against the body of the mic - with the stock 100 watt output of the radio. He bought another mic, just before he died, USED - but there is nothing to say that the problem isn't internal and not the fault of the mic.
His claim was that I pushed the mic button too hard and broke it.
He wanted me to buy him a new mic.
God bless him, he had cancer, what can I say.
So do you people think that this is a reasonable amount of money to pay for these items?
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Originally Posted by W5RB
