Thanks for that page out of R&H May 1949.

The two ads interest me: I have a Stead screwdriver like that somewhere among my tools, and I now have a name for the very common Aegis MV6 type knob.

At 550 guineas (£605), only those in the eastern suburbs would have been able to afford one and even then, not everyone there.

I make 550 guineas = £577/10/- (550 shillings = £27/10/-)

Allowing for inflation, in today's money that's $30,438.91 !!!

GTC, I think your conversion is correct - I keep forgetting there's 20 bob to the pound.

$30,000 sounds about right too - about half a year's wages going by the average weekly wage. It's amazing what little a dollar buys these days.

I was trying to work out what a guinea was as opposed to the dollar. I know there were australian pounds so why did we have guineas as well I know its a bit off topic . I fimly remember the day we went to the decimal system as I was trying to buy food at our tuckshop and the lady told me that pennys were no longer used. can you fill me in on this please. and yeah my conversion was very similar.

One guinea was worth £1/1 or one pound one shilling. A bit of a marketing ploy to make the price appear cheaper.

A bit of a marketing ploy to make the price appear cheaper.

Exactly, much the same as service stations charging 0.9c/l plus the dollar and cent value for a litre of petrol. Since it has been around 20 years since Australia had 1c and 2c coins this silly practice is a bit irrelevant.

I was trying to buy food at our tuckshop and the lady told me that pennys were no longer used

Conversion day was 14 Feb 1966. The old currency was still accepted from then onwards at the appropriate converted value, but once it reached a bank it was never recirculated.

I well recall some used car dealers still using pounds on their windscreen prices for a long time after conversion day because, from a distance, when using a small £ sign, their cars looked to be half price.

Would like to compare its circuit to the similar Scott 16A 'Metropolitan'(1948).
Repaired a Metropolitan recently, had multi audio-band noise gates (like used for early movie sound).
The gating function of this particular radio didn't work due to an open plate load resistor.
Couldn't obtain a decent price for this classic as buyers often remove the Jensen coax speaker and chassis to resell.

Yes Reliance produced sets with the most valve compliments in Australia, the York Royal 1937 was 20 valve the Sky Knight at 36 valve yet there was one bigger, but it never got out there. As Carl stated and correctly, the average battler could never find the coin to own one, They were made in very limited numbers, but after 1939 the big guns from Reliance faded away.

I've seen a 20 valve York Royal and the 10 valve Royal along with the 12 valve version from the early 30's. They were all class and the price reflected that, 998 from 1000 people could only dream of owning one, I read once that barely 50 of the 20 valve version were made.

How many 36 valve Sky Knights they produced could not have been a lot, as they went through a learning curve with the 20 valve of 1937 - customers were real thin on the ground for that model , purely because of costs to purchase it.