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The Northland Antique Radio ClubRADIO DAZE 2015 IN REVIEWBy 3:00 pm Friday, May 15, 2015, the large conference room at the Comfort Inn in Plymouth Minnesota was already abuzz with activity. People were there consigning their radios for the Radio Daze auction later in the evening. By 7:00 pm, the room was filled with bidders and the tables along the walls were filled with radios, box lots of radio parts, and lots of other things related to old radios. There were 87 registered bidders (up some from last year) and 153 items to sell.
Ed Ripley started the auction and went through the lots in rapid fire succession. Every minute, you heard SOLD! A Zenith Waltons radio sold early on. The same bidder also purchased a Philco 38-690 console. Frank Rasada auctioned the last half of the sale until it ended at about 10:30 pm.
The next morning, everyone was set up in the parking lot. The weather cooperated this year with no threat of rain. There were many nice items for sale and business was brisk. The security person was making sure everyone had their registration in order to sell. Inside, the Hospitality crew had a nice assortment of donuts, coffee and soft drinks in the Hospitality room. NARC members probably had a better breakfast than the hotel guests. Mary was busy getting folks registered and Pam assisted getting the door prizes in order. Registration and seller spaces were both up slightly over last year.
The contest room opened at 11:00 am so collectors could enter their items. There were 44 items entered this year from 19 different collectors, including some interesting advertising pieces and some very creative entries in the homebrew section. A Pal Butterfly speaker got the Best of Show award and the Peoples' Choice award as well. The Hospitality crew also offered a crowd pleaser lunch of hot dogs, chips, cookies and canned and bottled drinks, a bargain for $3. I look forward to this lunch every year. Great job! Steve Murphy of WCCO radio was this year's guest speaker and his presentation was riveting. It started with hearing live phone calls made during the 1965 tornado outbreak in Fridley, which was a FIRST in radio broadcast history. No one had EVER done a live broadcast with the public before. It was like being in the tornado fifty years later. Rob Brown, the man at WCCO who took the calls during the tornadoes, also spoke at length about the broadcast that night. Steve then spotlighted WCCO broadcast legends Dick Chapman, Steve Cannon, Roger Erickson, Charlie Boone, Franklin Hobbs, Bill Diehl, Joyce Lamont, Herb Carneal, Ray Christensen, Cedric Adams, Phil Hendrie, and more, and played clips of all of these great people. It was a very entertaining program! To wrap it up, the program ended with our usual over-abundance of door prizes, thanks to the Kip Wallace family. A special thanks to everyone who helped with making Radio Daze possible, and especially to Jim Thompson and Kip Wallace who coordinated the entire event. The auction was fantastic, the weather cooperated, the swap meet was great, the contest had some great items and the guest speaker was phenomenal. Radio Daze 2015 was one of the best. See you in 2016! Copyright 2024. All rights reserved. The Northland Antique Radio Club |