Thanks Darto, your post jogged a fond memory.
I recall I got a Zenith Royal 250 transistor radio; it was 1959.
For a kid in that time, the height of cool was a small shirt pocket AM radio. The Royal 250 was a bit larger,
it was
6 transistors, that was the state of the art, and it was NOT cheap.
I did odd jobs all summer to earn the $38
and handed that over to
Jay's TV for my set.
The real leather case was an additional $4, which, Jay allowed me to hand out 1000 of his paper ad flyers
all over town... at the end of the week, I claimed my tan leather case as payment.
According to the Inflation Calculator, $38 in 1959 is equivalent to about $401.92 today, 64 years later.
It used 4 AA batteries. and the COOL rock & roll station was WQAM in Miami.
Rick Shaw was the DJ and THE man!
A year or so later a wave of Japanese transistor radios flooded the market, and the prices fell greatly.
Of course, in 1959 anything from Japan was deemed JUNK!
(if you remember there was still WW2 hatred)
But a US owned, and manufacturer Zenith was the respected name in televisions, record players and short-wave radios.
Zenith came out with their line of Royal radios 250 , 400 , 500 and 1000 models. I think GE also had models. More that likely they all had Japanese components, but we or rather I was oblivious, mine was a Zenith !
I still had my radio and it still worked in 2012, but it was lost to my building fire that year.
I had long before regulated it to storage, and I had moved on over the years to AM-FM and cassettes, DVD and so on.
I do know it worked but, as I recall it had rather short AA battery life, I don't know it was age thing or
just comparably, it just seemed to use up the batteries some quicker as it was nearing 50 years old.
Oh! I just recalled, Rick Shaw's by-line Ditti intro
R-I-C-K - R-I-C-K AHHHH-SHAWShaw was the top-rated radio celebrity in South Florida in the 1960s, and among other accomplishments, was the first disc jockey to spin The Beatles’
“I Want to Hold Your Hand” in Miami in early 1964, on top-rated Top 40 station WQAM, “Tiger Radio” at 560 AM on your transistor radio dial.
Each night Rick would sign off with
"Good Night my Love" sung by Ray Peterson (1959)