Greg
Ebay can always be sort of silly. ah for the old days when a rusty piece of
stuff might go for a reasonable $.
But perhaps whats magical gold is the Patek Phillipe clock movement. Just a
guess.I hear they are quite annoying clunkers actually. I have never owned
one but a fellow in Europe was telling me you can really here them tick.
Regards
Paul
WB8TSL

On Sun, Jun 11, 2017 at 8:24 PM, Gregory Beat w9gb@icloud.com wrote:

Hi

The new age drill on anything unusual on eBay seems to be to start it out at $10,000 and lower it 5% every six months.
Eventually you will hit the “right” price. Apparently it is much easier to do this than to actually research the item you have.
I’ve always wondered how these guys deal with the inventory costs of waiting 20 years to sell something ….

Bob

On 6/11/17 6:37 PM, Bob kb8tq wrote:

A Dutch Auction

Hi Greg,

That would be me. There are quite a few versions of the Austron 1210 Crystal Oscillator, at least models A through D, as I tried to show on that page. I have a few and they are handy instruments, with a vintage appeal.

Ha! You think you're joking -- but what you're missing is that this version has the rare and valuable Patek Philippe analog clock. Perhaps you have also seen these beautiful electro-mechanical Patek movements on the early models of hp 5065A and hp 5061A frequency standards. Yes, even -hp- used them for their precious atomic clocks; that's how respectable and reliable these Patek mechanical impulse movements are.

It's a highly desirable clock display because not only is it of interest to the bottom-feeding collectors of vintage electronic T&F gear (like we time-nuts) but it's also of high-value to collectors of anything Patek Philippe (like the private jet and private island crowd). It's a rare cross between engineering and art; between function and fashion; between electronics and elegance; between history and who cares.

I first ran into this phenomenon years ago when innocently searching for words like 5065 clock. Yes, there were some hp rubidium vapor clocks, but there were also some mechanical wrist watches with the same model number -- but for more than ten times the price! That's when I knew that being a time-nut was a far cheap hobby compared to designer wrist-watches. The latter is an utterly massive industry with per-item prices in the 1e4, 1e5 and even 1e6 dollar range. It's what allows a time-nut to say: Honey, I bought a 5065 yesterday and saved $14,000!

To get a better idea, take a few eye candy moments:

1. You've never seen so many cool-looking electronic clocks:

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=patek-philippe-electronic-tower-master-clock

2. A very nice Patek Philippe Master Clock System that sold for a mere $125,000:

http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/patek-philippe-an-integrated-electronic-master-clock-5864933-details.aspx

3. Recent eBay auction. The Patek clock stepper movement alone:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/191026418966

4. I'm not joking about the "5065". Take your pick -- $1,500 or $23,000:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/252922060868

http://www.ebay.com/itm/201889713477

5. A collection of Patek photos I grabbed over the years:

http://leapsecond.com/museum/patek/

So, now you know why the eBay seller of http://www.ebay.com/itm/282490626815 is not suffering from heat exhaustion. If nothing else, his item is cheaper (and far less shipping costs) than this one:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/282495468972

/tvb

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gregory Beat" w9gb@icloud.com
To: time-nuts@febo.com
Sent: Sunday, June 11, 2017 5:24 PM
Subject: [time-nuts] BTTF : Austron 1210-C Crystal Clock

On Sun, Jun 11, 2017 at 9:01 PM, paul swed paulswedb@gmail.com wrote:

In my first job back in 1973 I inherited a lab that included what must have
been an HP 100C frequency reference. It took up most of a rack and divided
down a 100KHz oscillator with cascaded injection-locked 10:1 multivibrators
that used metal octal-base tubes. The final frequency of 100 Hz drove a
beautiful clock that made a very audible whine when it was working. This
must have been an option because I don't see any reference to it in the
100C manual.

At the bottom of the rack was a Hammarlund radio to tune in WWV for
calibration.

IIRC the clock motor also drove an adjustable cam and microswitch. The
receiver's audio was fed through the switch. I think the idea was that you
could accurately measure the oscillator drift by adjusting the phase of the
cam until you could hear WWV's tick during the short time the switch was
closed.

--

--Jim Harman

Hi Jim,

Maybe a version of this?:

http://leapsecond.com/history/Benchmark.htm

The audible (1 kc) whine was probably from the model 113 or 115. See if any of the following pages remind you:

http://leapsecond.com/hpclocks/
http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/hewlett_pa_frequency_divider_and_cl.html
http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1959-11.pdf
http://hpmemoryproject.org/wb_pages/wall_b_page_01.htm
http://hpmemoryproject.org/news/2012/vintage_01.htm

/tvb

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Harman" j99harman@gmail.com
To: "Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement" time-nuts@febo.com
Sent: Sunday, June 11, 2017 7:43 PM
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] BTTF : Austron 1210-C Crystal Clock

There's a 100C on eBay now, cheap, but it doesn't have a clock.

Jeremy

On Sun, Jun 11, 2017 at 9:51 PM Tom Van Baak tvb@leapsecond.com wrote:

--
Sent from Gmail Mobile

The 100C was the de-rated version of the 100D, which DID have a clock. The
eBay listing is #172415409793 for $71.95 plus a whole lot for shipping.
It's been listed for a couple of months.

On Mon, Jun 12, 2017 at 6:58 AM Jeremy Nichols jn6wfo@gmail.com wrote:

--
Sent from Gmail Mobile

Thanks for the references, Tom. The clock portion must have been a 113.
Operation at 1 kHz would certainly explain the whine.

I also remember taking a peek inside the oven and seeing an impressively
large chunk of quartz.

On Mon, Jun 12, 2017 at 12:45 AM, Tom Van Baak tvb@leapsecond.com wrote:

--

--Jim Harman