Retro Finds of the Week! (Vol. 5)
10/24 - 10/30/2022
Continuing on our quest of catching up on my retro finds series, I bring you a plethora of nostalgic goodies from the week of October 24, 2022!
My Regular Goodwill Stop
First up I stopped by my main Goodwill that I frequent. There is often not a lot of good stuff at this particular store, but this visit honestly surprised me with how much cool and random old stuff they had.
Panasonic 6 Disc CD Changer
First up we have, what appears to be, a stock 6 disc CD changer from a vehicle in the early-to-mid-2000’s. There are no corporate brandings on the front of the device which tells me it’s not an aftermarket stereo. The fact that it has both a 6 disc changer and a tape deck dates this thing pretty far back. Couple that with the XM Satellite Radio logo near the eject button and it’s clearly from before 2008 — which is when XM merged with Sirius.
Flipping the thing over I found a manufacturer’s sticker from Panasonic. It looks like this thing was built in 2004 over in Czech Republic. Pretty cool stuff.
2000’s Era Digital Pocket Dictionary
This little thing was an interesting find. It’s a Royal RP1000S electronic dictionary/thesaurus. It’s just used to define words and find words to use. You can play some word games on it too, but that’s about it. The screen is a little on the rougher side as it’s a non-backlit dot matrix display. The keys feel very mushy, but other than that the build quality isn’t terrible. When I saw it, I thought it would have been from around 2005-2006 or so, but the earliest reviews I found on it were from 2010 so maybe it came out closer to then.
A Very 70’s Calculator
I swear I’d seen one of these at my grandparents house years ago. It’s a pocket calculator. Specifically, it’s a Canon Palmtronic LC-1, released 1976 and being discontinued in 1978.
Sony Walkman WM-EX122
Well this was a cool find. It’s a Sony Walkman! Specifically it’s the WM-EX122. According to it’s manual — which Sony is still hosting, by the way — it was released in 1996 which puts it closer to the end of the cassette tape reign. I happened to have a couple of AA batteries on hand so I threw them in and it appears to be working, which is nice since my wife’s old Walkman has been having some serious trouble as of late. And they only wanted $1.98? Yeah, I picked this one up.
Vintage Music
Wrapping up this visit I swung by the media section to see what they had in stock. Moviewise, there wasn’t much, but they did have a couple of mid-90’s goodness in the CD section. I already owned Tubthumper on CD and The Lion King on cassette so I left them for someone else.
Lot of Retro Games
It’s not too often that I find video games at this Goodwill, but on this trip there was were quite a few on the shelf. None of them interested me, but here they are.
The New Goodwill
As a bonus, I ended up having to go to a nearby town to run some errands and ended up popping into the new Goodwill that was just built a few months back. It’s a really nice store in a nice area so I was hopeful to find some good stuff there.
More Vintage Music
Their music table was pretty full. Most of it was country music from the last 30 years, but they also had some that jumped out at me. First was a collection of jazz hits from the 1940’s, but also some great albums from the 80’s and 90’s — Duncan Shiek’s self titled album, Ace of Base’s The Sign, and Outfield’s Diamond Days.
Media Storage Shelf
Walking past the furniture section I spotted this nice little media shelf. I thought about grabbing it while I continued browsing, but when I came back someone had already picked it up.
Linksys PLEK400 Ethernet-Over-Power Kit
Next up I found this Linksys PLEK400 EoP pack. These things are cool because they use your home’s existing electrical wiring to carry data from one device to another. I actually really needed this about a year ago, but found another workaround so I left these. Still, it’s a cool find.
An Old TomTom GPS Device
And then there was $3.00 TomTom. For the younger readers here, these things were the bridge we used in the mid-2000’s between printing MapQuest directions and getting GPS on our smartphones.
Media Players Galore
This new store had a ton of DVD players, blu-ray players, and stereo equipment so I won’t go over all of it here, but the variety was pretty nice.
iCraig iPod Dock Tower
There was one thing that caught my eye. It’s an iCraig iPod tower dock. These things are fantastic and it would be awesome to go with the iPod I repaired about a year ago. Unfortunately they were wanting way too much for my taste so I had to pass on it. It’s possible the price was reasonable, but I wasn’t keen to drop $47 on something to play music on when I could just play it on any of the other devices we have at the house.
Final Haul
In the end, I only went home with the $2.00 Sony Walkman and I’m happy with it.
Be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already for the next installment of Retro Finds of the Week when we catch up on the week of November 14-20, 2022!