
A goldmine of Radio Shack goodies is up for auction - cstuder
http://hackaday.com/2017/06/24/a-goldmine-of-radio-shack-goodies-is-up-for-auction/
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dkresge
I don't know if they were ahead of their time, or woefulily, even negligently,
unaware of their market. I remember going to "the mall" as a kid with my Mom
and spending (what seemed like) hours staring, coveting, and sometimes
purchasing the blue blister pack ICs; all while she waited patiently to do her
shopping. I didn't have the income they were looking for, and was far from
their target demographic. Some time in 1979 my dad paid the local RS a visit
with an intent to purchase a computer for the family. After spending an hour
in an effort to get some answers from the salesman who, according to my
father, was more interested in selling battery memberships, he walked out. I
now recognize and appreciate that, at the time, a $2.5k purchase might have
been seen as the exceedingly unlikely result of questions from "just another
lookie loo". But if R.S. took even a moment to see the potential of their
customer base, I likely wouldn't have awoken Christmas 1979 to an Apple ][+.

~~~
pavement
The collapse of Radio Shack can be attributed to an obvious lack of sales
support. And by that, I mean, for the sales people that they actually hired,
what they gave them to sell, and what the operation as a whole needed to do to
perform was absurd.

Radio Shack, as a job, was/is a step above fast food, and a step below
clothing, in terms of status. If Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons wasn't
selling comic books, he'd be a Radio Shack employee (if you were _lucky_ ).
The people attracted to that job were not serious sales people, and the things
they were made to sell were mostly undesirable, or worse incomprehensible
without expertise. The store was filled with trash items that sold at
christmas and broke by valentines day. All of this, right next to certain
niche and high-end items that rarely moved.

Because Radio Shack sold a lot of cheapskate wares, everything bought from
Radio Shack felt like a gamble (as the store's very name should suggest). The
revolving sales associates had distractions about battery sizes mixed in with
thousand dollar sales, so if there was commission to be had, they were still
forced to swat flies.

Radio Shack was usually a hole in the wall. 900 square feet would probably be
a large-ish Radio Shack. Without zones or departments, every Radio Shack
employee was always selling everything, which means they were pulled in every
direction, and their motivation landed somewhere in between selling fuzzy
slippers that sing Jingle Bells in electronic chirps, and selling sub-par
desktop competitors to Gateway 2000, without fully understanding or caring
about the difference between an Intel 386 and an Intel 486DX.

Because Radio Shack was a high school summer job at best, or a 9 to 5 career
move at worst, it's interesting that they lasted decades longer than maybe
most people would have expected.

~~~
KGIII
That was not always true. They'd help us pick parts for projects, figure out
projects, and even give you a hand if you got stuck.

They were once a great store, staffed by smart people, and had quality goods.

~~~
pavement
Ah, well, I can only speak about the 90's and later, really.

~~~
KGIII
Late sixties, early seventies. They weren't bad even into the eighties. You
can see where they went.

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ChuckMcM
I suppose it would not be as fun if the title was "A thrift store of Radio
Shack goodies" but the truth is I've seen an example of just about everything
they are auctioning off at thrift stores. Radio Shack moved a _lot_ of product
and its out there still :-). I don't think it will hit peak nostalgia until
2020. See that way people who were 10 in 1990 and had their lives changed by
the neat stuff they could buy there, will be 40 and will be trying to
recapture that wonder that has been beaten out of them by 15 to 20 years of
CRUD programming.

EDIT: Ok, not the pictures of the executives and the stuff they handed out for
sales person of the quarter :-)

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
There may also be nostalgia about the prices. If you look at the old catalogs

[http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/](http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/)

and adjust the prices of hifi and other toys to modern values the products
seem incredibly expensive.

E.g. the best LP player + radio + speaker package from 1968 cost around $300 -
which would be around $2500 today.

Of course you can spend $25,000 (or $250,000...) on modern hifi. But Radio
Shack were always aimed at the mass market and not at esoteric hifi
perfectionists.

RS seem to have made a lot of money hyping mediocre products that cost maybe a
couple hundred dollars to manufacture and selling them for $1000 to $2500 a
go.

I'd be fascinated to know what their operating margins were in the 60s and
70s.

~~~
bitwize
Tandy computers, in the early days at least, had a reputation for being high
quality at an affordable price. The Model I was often called the TRASH-80, but
the business machines, the Color Computer line, and their line of PC
compatibles were all fairly highly regarded.

The Tandy 2000, in particular, was not 100% PC compatible, but a) it came out
at a time when that mattered less than it would in later years; b) it was much
more performant than IBM products that would be released even a year later; c)
it was cheap for PC-grade hardware. And the legacy of the Tandy 2000 lives on:
the layout of three rows of four f keys above the number keys was first used
on that machine's keyboard.

~~~
jsjohnst
Unless one is being very pedantic on their definition of "100% PC compatible",
it's a common myth that Tandy computers weren't 100% compatible.

~~~
LeoPanthera
In general, Tandy PCs were compatible with the IBM PCjr[1]. In fact, Tandy
sold far more PCs than IBM sold PCjrs, so later software was often advertised
as being "Tandy compatible" rather than "PCjr compatible".

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PCjr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PCjr)

------
robmiller
My memorabilia of RadioShack,
[https://imgur.com/a/BolEA](https://imgur.com/a/BolEA)

I even worked for them in Nashville before grad school. Sold a lot of cell
phones, but my favorite was selling a karaoke machine to Harry Connick, Jr.

------
coupdejarnac
I think the only thing I really miss about the Tandy/Radio Shack era is going
ice skating at the Tandy Center in downtown Fort Worth when I was a small
child. I got my start in engineering with their kits and Forest M. Mims books,
but shopping there was a mixed experience. Talk about a poorly run company.

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innovate
this is my favorite story about the impact radio shack had on a generation of
early makers and startups: "HOW I FOUNDED A $2 BILLION COMPANY WITH A 95 CENT
BOOK FROM RADIOSHACK": [https://www.wired.com/2016/07/how-i-
founded-a-2-billion-comp...](https://www.wired.com/2016/07/how-i-
founded-a-2-billion-company-with-a-95-cent-book-from-radioshack/)

I also loved shopping there... the items seemed to be obscure, growing up I
always wondered who actually shopped there for these items to justify an
entire store... but the demand was there, they just didn't figure out how to
take advantage of the early-mover advantage

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
I remember an Archie comics that was distributed at my school where it was
basically and advertisement for Tandy computers. Archie, his dad, and the
school principal all had Tandy computers that ehy did awesome stuff on.

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jacquesm
Several model 100's in there, I'll bet that those will end up being used
rather than stored.

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waspear
What goodies, like the $50 usb cables?

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ams6110
Crap from a crappy company that treated their employees like crap.

~~~
jacquesm
Well, it beat having nothing and in many towns RS was the only way you were
going to get parts. Overpriced and way too much packaging but better than
none.

What really bugged me about RS/Tandy is their pull-out from Europe. One day
they were still taking in customer repairs and downpayments and the next day
they were gone, everything shipped to Nanine in Belgium and sold for pennies.

Pure theft.

