Amateur (Ham) Radio Help

Gents,

My grandfather was a Navy radio operator in WWII, and took up Ham radio as a hobby before I was born. He hasn't used his equipment for a few years, and my grandmother is hoping to sell it to clear out the bedroom that it's in. Since he was recently admitted to a nursing home, she has had several people in their small town who have made their interest in buying the equipment known. Many have also said something along the lines of, "I'll take it off your hands".

For anyone here who is involved with Ham radios, do you have any suggestions on how we might get the equipment appraised? I have absolutely no experience with it, and don't have the space to store it or the desire to take it up as a hobby. I wasn't sure if anyone on B&B might be able to give me a ballpark number of what the stuff is worth through PM once I compile a list, or if there are stores/clubs that I may be able to contact.

Any help/suggestions would be appreciated. I currently live in Indianapolis, so I will be doing as much research as I can on what may be available around here.

The hobby association for radio hams is the American Radio Relay League, http://www.arrl.org/. Most of them are both nice and outgoing in my experience. They often hold events called "hamfests" which can have a flea-market element. Of course if you can determine the product details you can look on Ebay.

What Hifigeezer said, plus you may want to take a look at the classified areas of eham.net, where they sell just about ANYTHING ham-related from any era.

Jeff in Boston

Thanks, guys. I appreciate it, and I'll check out the websites you mentioned this evening.

The equipment will have readily searched for model numbers and manufacturer's names. Use those to search closed auctions on ebay for value ranges. This should get you an idea of what things are worth.

Ebay is a also a good way to sell items like this, as it reaches a wide market. In a slow economy, I think prices are down, though, and the selling may be sluggish.

There are also vendors of ham stuff on the internet who buy/sell/trade ham gear. You may be able to sell to them, or use their online used gear prices to establish equipment value.

Check Google for some leads. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ham+radio+equipment+used&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

HRO http://www.hamradio.com/ and AES http://www.aesham.com/ are two large vendors with phyical locations in quite a few cities, as well as some others, with websites.

- Mike