my first damaged ebay buy :(

[Jeffhs]

I scored a Zenith TransOceanic portable (Royal 1000) on ebay a couple weeks ago. The radio worked after it arrived at my apartment (as it does to this day; you can't kill these old soldiers easily--they were built like tanks and sound great, which are several reasons why I like early Zeniths so well), but had several things out of place that the seller did not mention. One, the band selector knob was loose on its shaft; two, the cabinet and chassis were filthy and dusty (the chassis looked as if it was pitted in several spots and I swear, I saw some rust somewhere near one of the transistors--this thing must have been sitting in the former owner's basement, garage, attic, etc., unused, for years or decades); three, the BC/SW removable Wavemagnet antenna and the battery case were missing; four, the AC adapter jack was flopping around loose; and last, the dial lights did not work. As I said, the seller made no mention whatsoever in the item listing of the missing parts, the loose knob/AC adapter socket or the burned-out pilot lights. Should have left him negative feedback (for having left out so many details, minor though they were, not to mention the lack of proper packing material--the radio looked to have been hastily packed in a couple layers of bubble wrap, with wadded-up computer paper around the whole thing--good thing the set was built as solidly as it was, or else it would have been smashed to bits by the time it got to me), but didn't have the heart to since the radio worked and looked to be in decent shape otherwise.