In 1989, jewelry maker Tiffany & Co and electronics company Sony released a silver-plated Walkman (complete with a fitted wooden box) to celebrate 10 years of the portable cassette player. Only 250 were made at the time, according to The Guardian.
Several decades on, and long since the cassette Walkman began its slide into obsolescence – outpaced first by the cumbersome Discman and the vibe-less MiniDisc player, then lapped by the iPod and iPhone – you can still find some of these items selling in auctions for hundreds and sometimes thousands of pounds.
One of the Tiffany Walkmans, originally presented to the Who, was later sold by the ex-wife of the band’s late bassist John Entwistle on a 2011 episode of the US TV show Pawn Stars. After some haggling, the traders at Gold & Silver Pawn in Las Vegas agreed to pay $1,250 for it.
“This is one of those weird things that I think someone’s willing to buy just to say they have it,” Pawn Stars’ Corey Harrison said.
But who would spend thousands on a tape player in the age of Spotify and YouTube, when virtually all your entertainment needs can be concentrated into one device in your pocket? “Time can make easy fetishists of us all,” remarked the culture writer Niko Stratis on seeing news stories reporting that branches of Urban Outfitters in the US were selling iPods for $350 (not far off the price they were on release in the early 2000s). There is plenty of such backward-gazing trading to be found online: eBay seller Retrogadgets-UK offers a “factory-sealed” third-generation iPhone “sold for collectors only” listed at £2,499.99.”
US brand Retrospekt sells all manner of refurbished old tech. “Our mission is to give you a product with years of history that works like it was made yesterday,” it declares.
Elsewhere you can find camcorders and digital cameras, VHS and DVD players, “vintage” Game Boys and everything, including the soundtrack to classic teen soap Beverly Hills on cassette (yours for £15.39) and a surprisingly large number of Walkmans.
