I've heard a side band ham traders net before but the one I heard Friday night on 3870 may be a different one.  At any rate, the first listing was an older Icom Ic-581A which was used as one of the transmitters by W1AW during their daily transmissions.  The guy selling it said it was in perfect, or near perfect, condition and he was asking 2,000 dollars for it.  I had no guess as to the asking price but I guess 2 grand isn't bad.  I bought a perfect condition IC-571a for 600 a few years ago.

My first SSB transceiver I fired up on 75 meters when I was 14 years old and had been a general for just a month was the Drake TR4.  It was my Christmas gift from my mom, dad died a few years before, and mom got me a brand new, never been out of the box, Drake TR4.  She paid $525 new and I was in hog heaven as a brand new general.  I got a new D104 microphone with the Drake, too.  I operated every waking hour during Christmas vacation from the school for the blind and then I got a cold.  My voice dropped into the frog frequency range and I was so sick, mom kept me home one more week after the school for the blind fired up after January first.  The hams at the school said they never would have believed I was sick, but was just playing sick, so I could have one more week on the TR4 before going back to school if it wasn't for my froggy voice.  So I had about three straight weeks with the TR4 before I had to go back to school.  My nick name was chosen for me by a couple of blind ham friends at this same time and I was forever called Squeakie or just Squeak because that what they said my basey voice sounded like on side band due to my winter cold.  A friend who worked on my rotor has a like new Drake TR4 which I am going to get from him just for old times sake.  I have a big power supply that will run it, too, and he claims it works now but he wants to tune it up for me first.  That should be fun.

Phil.
K0NX