I'm slowly going around my museum, putting period shop price tags on displayed equipment. I can only do this as and when research turns up the correct prices. Sources for this being either through acquisition of brochures which include price or rental lists, and sometimes trade adverts in magazines.
It really is an eye-opener, putting aside the reliability and cost of ownership by purchasing outright, you can understand why the vast majority went for rented, rather than purchase. I was quite taken aback recently upon learning that the Labgear 7026 Teletext set-top box was a shocking £399! Now, when you consider the cost of just buying one of the cheapest colour TVs and also wanting to be an early adopter of the new Teletext service, this combined pair would set you back a cool £621. The equivalent of £6,299 in 1973, that was the cost of a terraced house on the Sussex south coast! Then you'd have to pay for any repairs on top of all that, so unless you were loaded, £1.54 per week to your local TV shop for a 19" TV was more do-able for most folk. No idea if you could rent Teletext boxes, as I've nothing on hand about them other than outright purchase costs.
A year later in 1974, someone contemplating a purchase of the flagship HMV Thorn 4000, to watch the German world cup and the Labgear Teletext box to keep up with results on Ceefax, would have to find a whopping £989,00, that's the equivalent of £8,747.58
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Yes colour was mainly rented in the seventies. Only the really wealthy bought them. My Uncle who was well off, owned his house (which was 40K in 1971!) And had a new Jag every three years rented his first colour set, a GEC.
When I had the TV shop we had a Thorn 2000 which we used in a window display from time to time explaining how it cost about the same as a new Mini when it was new showing how "cheap" a new set was now. But looking at those calculations it was even more than that! The other thing to consider was that sets would break down regularly and most early sets didn't have a useful service life of much more than 8 years, 10 Max and some were on their second tube by then!
Ouch!!! I think the house on the Sussex coast would have been a better investment! With prices like that though, it made sense to keep a set for a long time and have it repaired when it went wrong, unlike today where they are dirt cheap and pretty much a throw away item.
Regards,
Lloyd
My well to do family were still renting a set from Granada until late 1984, when my Dad must have done the maths & decided buying a reliable set on credit was cheaper in the long run.
In spite of looking at brochures here & elsewhere I've not been able to pin down what set we rented, but it was certainly looking dated by the mid 1980s.
The 16" Philips CTX set we bought only needed professional attention 2-3 times & was still working when it was thrown out around the time of the digital switchover!
My parents rented a Decca CS2230 from Granada for a year I can remember the smell of hot cardboard from the back cover when the set was new. After a year they bought a 19" Marconi 8500 which I still have in my dining room. I was a bit disappointed at first because the screen seemed small after the Decca but I suppose they bought what they could afford. It was one of the few things they had on H.P.
Even the Royals rented! I knew the chap who ran a small shop near the Sandringham estate. R.C. Hunt. He supplied all the Tannoy equipment for the garden parties. When the Queen Mother stayed at Sandringham for the summer they would rent a Grundig set for her and then sent it back at the end of summer when she returned to Clarence house. The set was then stored at the shop until it was next required.
When I supplied some sets to Netflix for 'The Crown' series I mentioned to the prop buyer that the sets were often rented. I don't know if it was because of my comment or if they had researched this already, but during one episode the TV was playing up and the Queen Mother gave it a whack on the top. The Queen then said something like "Mummy don't do that it's rented! "
Rental was big business, every high street had two or three rental shops and the smaller back streets were full of independents piled high with second-hand bangers - sorry!... Bargains! I was one of them!
Rental was big business, every high street had two or three rental shops and the smaller back streets were full of independents piled high with second-hand bangers - sorry!... Bargains! I was one of them!
Last indie I recall renting was Cotton's, now down Oundle Road - are they still going?
Hi Mike, Cottons apparently closed recently. Dennis Cotton passed away some years ago. I got on with him really well and for a few years bought really good ex-rentals from him. Some people who worked for him said he had a bit of a temper but I never saw that side of him. The shop until it's recent closure used to do some imaginative window displays I would go past fairly often when I was working and always looked forward to seeing a new window. Often featuring vintage equipment. The shop still offered rental but I imagine the customer base was in decline. That is the shop my Uncle rented his first GEC from.
Cottons offered a TV surgery where you could take your set in for repair and wait while the engineer did his magic a very innovative idea which meant they could cherry pick easy quick jobs and send the b*****d faults elsewhere! I wish I had copied that Idea!
