JVC Victor RC-M90

An m90 was 350 pounds back in 81 82 longman, so interested to know

 

According to the Bank of England £1372
On a comparable basis that was almost the same price as a BBC Computer.
With all the emphasis on educational uses I'm sure far more of those got sold in the U.K.
The only audio gear approaching that sort of price in the 1982 Kays catalogue were stack systems, with the most expensive Boomboxes being these two

 

i had the rotel longman cracking box...the price for the m90 was seen one of those 80's mags you guys posted...forgive me my memory is failing me

 

Probably Mister X. £350 does sound about right for a top of the range box though. The Sharp VZ2000 was about the same (although the VZ2500) was much cheaper at £200.

As for what else you could have bought in 1982 have a look at this

The funny thing is you would be lucky to get £50 for the lot these days.
There again I recently saw some "Home video" footage obviously taken with a similar camera and it made Super 8 cine film look good.

 

such a shame modern tv's have killed of the video recorder, i gave several away a few weeks ago

 

I'm stocking up on them Unlike cassettes where there are still a few cheap mediocre machines being made, no one is manufacturing VCR decks these days. A couple of years ago I spent £15 on a Cathy Dennis VHS tape. Despite being 1990 the videos weren't available on DVD and Youtube had blocked them. I know they are not to everyone's taste but would you believe there are officially released Spice Girls tapes that never got issued on DVD.

Back to VCRs I suspect that only the top of the range ones will be likely to appreciate, but many people will want something just to view old tapes,

 

off topic these are back home Mr x and there selling for a bloody fortune like the m90 View attachment 28452

 

the price of the m90 was in that pet shop boys magazine the one for the kids, it's on the forum lads

 

There ya go

 

Thanks for that. That might have been me as the magazine looks to be Smash Hits with Andrew Ridgely holding the small TV. The prices might be slightly high as I have definitely seen the VZ2500 advertised at £199. However it is interesting that the Sony FH7 was cheaper. I could believe that the M90 was the most expensive gimmick free one piece Radio Cassette ever sold.

Back to VCRs I have two of the Sony SL-F1s (both working) and a camera which I have had for years but never tested. I didn't pay more than £100 for the whole lot, being the only bidder on the second SL-F1. Incidentally the matching PCM-F1 was Sony's main contribution to the compact disc allowing CD quality digital recordings (onto Betamax tape) before CDs had even been announced.

 

good morning Longman, glad i could clarify the price bud, i now have an older tv so i may be able to use a vcr, do not buy a new one as they are just hdmi garbage....i also have the first 10 original tapes of prisoner cell block h, how cool is that lol

 

to be fair the m90 sounds better than the fh7 lomgman...it's the big fh that are legendary like the fh909..(twice the size and power)..i think i still have one, mains only tho

 

I don't know how long the M90 was manufactured, but from what I've seen, most boomboxes were manufactured for 12 months or less. Which means next year it's obsolete and will probably get discounted. So the only price of historical value is the one when it originally hit the stores. 6-12 months later, it was common to see prices cut 20-50% for many models, especially if the brand wasn't very popular.

Now if you're talking about small "upscale" audio/video stores that overpriced everything, then yeah they would keep the price high for a longer period of time......assuming the buyer was gullible enough to pay it. And those types of stores were often willing to negotiate anyway, so the price kinda loses its meaning.

 

Yeah anytime a trend is hot and people have money, product lifecycle becomes really short. There literally must have been hundreds of thousands of different boomboxes.

And it all went by so fast. 80 and 81 were the top years for innovation and quality.....All the best stuff was introduced then.....JVC M90, National RX-7200, Toshiba RT-S90, Sanyo M-X820, Hitachi TRK-9900, Sony CFS-F70, Aiwa CS-880, Kenwood DC-20, Pioneer SK-900, Sharp GF-777 and GF-9696. It went downhill after that. Feature count dropped, no more manual recording level knobs, no more line output. In exchange, size and empty space increased.

 

Thanks for this page ... we now have a pricing base

 

This thread started with a discussion on how much people are paying for M90s.
Most people seem to agree that the M90 is one of the best boxes of the 1980s.
The Smash Hits feature indicates that they were around £333 new, the equivalent of over £1000 in todays money and maybe the most expensive box back then.

My very first Stereo2Go post (back on the old forum) was to compare the price of a Boombox in the 1980s with the motorbike I bought back then, in response the question "Why are Vintage Boomboxes so Expensive".
Trying to find the Smash Hits article I found an interesting advert

So for about the price of an M90 you could get one of the small bikes in the advert.

Is there anyone on the forum who bought, or knew someone who bought a new M90 back in the day ?

 

Speaking of bikes....In the late 90s to mid 00's the sportbikes would get a fresh redesign every 2 years. Then the recession hit, and redesigns became every 3-5 years. Then in the 2010's, kids started becoming more interested in phones than motor vehicles, so now manufacturers give us bikes with 10 year old designs with some fresh electronic gimmicks thrown in.