Toaster Central: Antique and Vintage Toasters and Waffle Irons

http://radioheaven.homestead.com/

I was talking with Ron W4RON on ham radio and he mentioned that he collects old radios and told me about his site. I asked him if he had a Truetone radio and he said he had one from the 1930s.

I went on to explain that in the 1970s I saw a Truetone radio at a neighbor's garage sale, and the printing on the back panel said:

     Equipped with
  Truetone Stratoscope

      Eliminates
   Aerial and Ground

I thought the Truetone Stratoscope name was pretty cool, and I adopted it as my hippie nickname and later my online handle. I used to try to get Truetone but someone always beat me to it, so I started using Stratoscope.

Ron said his Truetone radio didn't have a Stratoscope but he was familiar with it; it was something they added later.

Here's a Truetone Stratoscope from another antique radio site:

https://www.radiomuseum.org/images/radio/western_auto_supply...

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/western_au_d2610.html

Back to Radio Heaven, Ron has a neat story of how he got started collecting radios and some wisdom he learned from his mom (edited for brevity):

I went with my mother to a local flea market and there sitting on the tailgate of a pickup just inside the gate was...an Atwater Kent model 20. I remember the dealer had it priced at $15, I only had $10 so I asked my mom for $5 so I could buy the radio. She said "I'm not going to give you $5 to buy that old piece of junk, if you want it try to haggle him down to $10". Well, he took the $10 and I was hooked, not only on old radio, but haggling with dealers over their price.