I was browsing eBay a few minutes ago and was surprised when I found a Zenith two-transistor radio, made in Hong Kong. I've liked Zenith radios for years and have a small collection of them (mostly tube type but two solid-state sets), but I've never seen anything like this one. I had a 2-transistor pocket-size "boys' radio" (with a speaker and an earphone jack) years ago, but it was an off brand (Coronet) with the tuning dial visible through a hole in a simulated metal crown at the right end of the front panel and a similar indicator arrangement for the volume control (a red dot for the off position, then 1,2,3,4... up to about six for volume) visible through a simulated metal piece with a small hole in the center at the left end of the plastic front panel (looking at the radio from the front). It worked, but I could only get one station on it (the local 500-watt top-40 station about three miles east of where I lived at the time). Never did know who actually manufactured the set. Wish I would have held on to it; it would have been a collector's item today.

The Zenith 2-transistor set I'm referring to here, however, does not have a loudspeaker; just a hard-wired earphone. It takes an oddball battery (the eBay seller said in the description he did not know what type of battery it used, so the radio is being sold as-is and untested), but after looking at the pictures of the chassis I think it might use one or two AA penlight cells; the cabinet doesn't look big enough for a standard 9-volt transistor radio battery. I've attached a picture of the radio to this post. Cute, isn't it? It reminds me of an early Zenith Space Command TV remote.

BTW, I wonder if Zenith ever made any crystal sets, or marketed sets made by another firm which Zenith then rebadged. The radio I'm describing here, like all 2-transistor portables, isn't much more than a glorified crystal set, but here I'm speaking of a real crystal set requiring an outdoor antenna. I've had a few crystal sets in my time, including one my dad and I built when I was in Cub Scouts in the mid-1960s, but never one with a known brand name. The closest I ever came to having a brand-name crystal set was around 1970 or so, when I had a "Remco" crystal set with a fixed diode detector and a slider control on the front panel that acted as a tuning control; it had a metal piece on a stud inside the cabinet that contacted the tuning coil. Like the 2-transistor Coronet radio, my Remco crystal set only brought in the local top-40 station during the day, but I remember tuning around on the radio one night after the local station signed off and hearing, very faintly, one of the top-40 stations in Cleveland, 30-some miles away. On a regular transistor or tube-type radio this wouldn't be anything to write home about, but to a 14-year-old kid living in a Cleveland suburb, listening to Cleveland radio over a crystal set, the whole thing was like hearing rare DX on the amateur radio bands.

The crystal radio and its antenna are long gone, but the memory of hearing a 5kW Cleveland radio station 30 miles away, that didn't have very good nighttime coverage out to where I lived at the time, over a crystal set is still with me and will be, hopefully, for many years to come.

Ah, memories.

That's an interesting radio. I never knew Zenith to make a radio of that type. It's possible that it takes a round nine volt battery that is similar in size to a AA battery. Many earlier transistor radios used that round 9V battery. I have soldered a standard 9V battery clip in these sets since the old round 9V battery is hard to find.

Jogged my memory when you mentioned the Coronet "Boys Radio", so I had to check out the junk box, as I vaguely remembered having one once. When I found it, it turned out to be labeled "Windsor", but in all other aspects, the same radio, even down to the tuning dial showing through the crown (or coronet).
I popped in a battery and it did pick up a couple stations, though very faint (no AM stations in our city and the closest is about 100 miles or so). As far as being "collectible", IIRC I picked it up for about $5.00 at the local flea years ago and I don't think they bring $20.00 on Ebay today. The one transistor which looks original is marked Matsushita which I think is part of National Panasonic? No. 2 transistor is a Sanyo, and looks like it may be a replacement. Not sure, but it could easily have been made by Panasonic.
The little Zenith looks interesting. I wonder if it's a Sinclair (UK) clone? as was the Cleartone, made in Canada in the 1960s. They use a couple watch type batteries in series though.
Haggis.

I had one of those; it was given to my father, IIRC, by the Zenith distributor. No idea what happened to it.

Check the discussion site for transistor radios. There is a link to a site that has a number of the child radios. I think that was the term for these. Looked at it one time but do not remember the Zenith on it so maybe you've got an addition for the webmaster.

Crystal radios still have a following and I think it is slowing gaining in popularity as a niche. Finding kits was almost impossible about 10 years ago but they are now available. Vintage crystal sets cna fetch more than some are paying for stereo components. The thrill of hearing something 20-30 miles away can still be there for us oldies. Recently, I started to listen to AM much more and have a crystal kit that I'll put together this summer as a starter project.

Was nosing around eBay tonight and found yet another small Zenith (Hong Kong) portable transistor radio, not unlike the black 2-transistor set I mentioned two nights ago. This one is in the shape of an owl (the front panel actually looks like a winking owl; you can't miss it--I also saw one of these same radios last night, same winking owl on the front, in a green-color cabinet) and it plays through an attached earphone, no speaker, like the first one I mentioned here. I can't help thinking that Zenith must have made a blue million of these little radios in the '60s; I never saw one before now, but they are starting to show up on eBay so I guess they are becoming popular as collectibles. These radios (not to mention the black set that prompted me to start this thread) were very small, with a pin back so that they could be worn on a lapel or simply carried in a pocket. (One of these I saw was missing the pin back, but the radio supposedly still worked.) The downside of these radios, like all 2-transistor sets, was and is that they only work well if you are within spitting distance of one or more powerful stations; there was no provision for connecting any kind of outdoor antenna. I saw a 2-transistor set, something like the "Coronet" radio I had, on John Kendall's Vintage Electronics website (http://www.vintage-electronics.com), but the one for sale there had a whip antenna not unlike a car radio antenna, rather than a loopstick, and the branding on the radio was "Windsor", IIRC. Did these small radios actually work better with a telescoping whip antenna than with the built-in loop? :scratch2:

More pictures of these here:

http://atomicwarehouse.com/more.cfm?productid=1631&categoryid=2