The Olden Days
I remember my Dad telling me that when they moved from Japan to the US a lot of stuff got sold. I've heard the opinion that the country that won the Korean War was actually Japan. Meaning that Japan was still recovering from World War II and that the injection of cash from the US Military (including buying trucks from a struggling Toyota) really made a big difference to the Japanese economy.
Whatever the reason I was stunned when he told me about a couple of items he sold, a Kodak Pony 828 camera and a shortwave receiver (I'm now assuming that it was an S-38C, he didn't say at the time). He had bought these at the PX when he was in the Army and told me he was able to sell them for about the same price. Post Korean War Japan was apparently flush with cash whatever the reason !
I got the Hallicrafters ad/price from the Nov. 1952 issue of the US Army Combat Forces Journal.
The Kodak Pony 828 ad/price were from an issue of Popular Photography magazine of similar vintage.
Kodak Pony 828 inflated price
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=31.15&year1=195301&year2=202112
S-38c inflated price
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=49.5&year1=195301&year2=202112
The 828 film format is interesting, it was mostly gone by the time I got into photography. The 828 film was 35 mm wide but had a paper backing just like the 620 film used in a box camera. Kodak would make money from licensing film formats to camera makers. Every few years a new format arrived. 126 aka Instamatic was also 35mm film but in a plastic cassette that was easy to load. 127 was similar to 620 paper backed roll film except narrower. 110 film was much smaller in width (16mm) and also in a plastic cassette. There was also a Kodak disc format that was used in flat cameras bearing a form factor not unlike today's cell phones. Finally the APS format was the last that I recall, the film had a cassette like 35mm except that the camera loaded automatically. While the pictures may not have been any better the cameras did get smaller and smaller.
Now while both the Kodak Pony and Hallicrafters S-38c were decent products in their day (and both made in the USA) certainly much better replacements could be purchased in 2021 at much lower prices. It makes me smile that in the land of Nikon and Canon, people would buy a used Kodak !
A little over a decade after moving back to the US the folks bought me a Hallicrafters S-120 shortwave (similar electrically to the S-38c) but this time it was made in Japan. A few years after that in high school they gifted me a camera, an Olympus 35RC again made in Japan. I still have them both and would never part with them.
Best Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm
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