Price

[Rvito]

Does anyone know what a pair of 19's Sold for New back in the Day?????Just Wondering

[gearjammer]

Hi Well like I said in the other post those are the prices that I got. I bought mine from first owner in Milwaukee and he told me he paid $1200 and I saw a pair in Grand Forks north dakota in a hi-fi shop in 1977 and that was the price as well. Also I saw a pair at the local altec dealer in Winnipeg around the same time and they had a pair tagged at $2400can. But you could get them to sell at $2200. But the thing is in 1977 I could dream but could not buy.

[gearjammer]

Also I figure someone will ask how much I paid, so I might as well post that as well. $800.00 U.S.
They are in walnut and in mint condition with alnico drivers top and bottom. I do not use the base, but instead float the cabinets 2" with solid foam insulation blocks set back from the edges of cabinet which does indeed give it a floating look. I have owned these for 3 years.

[GM]

Greets!

$1200/pr, new, in '77 for a large consumer speaker?! Wow, that's a heck of a deal compared to $425/ea distributor net in '72 for an unassembled A7-500.

GM

[RonSSS]

The real question is, how much is 1977 $1200 in todays money?
I bought new A7's in 77 for $389 each....in the boxes, 416-8B, 511 horns, N1200 Xovers and 802-8G's. Granted it was a wharehouse sale and they were called "disco speakers", but just the same.
Still have all of the parts.............
Ron

[gearjammer]

Well You could go round and round trying to figure out or comparing yesterdays money to todays money, but I will say this I am earning about 10 times the income today compared to 1977 so even if I was to purchase a item at the same dollar amount as it sold for when new I am only paying 10 percent of what it cost back in 1977 in terms of time spent to generate the money to make the purchase today.

[armandh]

immagine what $1200 invested with these guys would be today http://members.arstechnica.com/x/armandh2/MS1978.jpg

[GM]

Greets!

Interesting! I was long gone from being active in audio by '77, but was under the impression that Altec didn't go downhill until the early '80s when I learned JBL was getting the contracts on most of the new local cinema installs, with B*** getting the rest, but the '77 'blowout' warehouse pricing and low consumer audio prices implies otherwise.

Anyway, if you're making ~10x more than then you're doing pretty good since the average rate of inflation has only gone up ~2.26x according to this: http://inflationdata.com/inflation/I...Calculator.asp

GM

[JimRoy]

To confuse the issue I have an original copy of the Feb 1978 High Fidelity Magazine test of the Model 19. They wrote that the Model 19 sold for $749. This appears to be for each speaker.

[armandh]

so AR stood the HI-FI world on it's ear and things have not been the same, huge speakers have had the feminist veto and banished from the living room ever since