What are these? (owner worked in electrical field in some capacity)

[Richard]

Wife went to an online estate auction.... bought a shelving unit and everything that was on it.

It was clear this guy was some form of electronics person. I'm thinking he worked for the original AT&T or Pac Bell or something like that as he had loads of things that were phone related.

Mouse is there to show some scale. It's pretty clear the item on the right bolts down to something and a wire would seem to connect to it with the screw down crimper.

The thing on the left has me perplexed. In the plumbing world it would "simply" be a reducer from say a full inch copper pipe to 1/4" copper tubing. I can't imagine this is for plumbing as he had nearly a dozen of them. Then again, I can't imagine putting in a 1" thick wire on one side and dropping it down to Cat-5 on the other side. The scale is just confusing to me.

So....here it is.

Also, the guy had a pristine Western Electric (recitifer?) tube 355-A which is monster sized, wrapped in its box with all the protective stuffing in there. He had some interesting things I gotta say.

(do these things have any value other than melting down copper? I might throw them on ebay but....it would help to know what they are first!!)

 

[grsthegreat]

The thing on the right os a simple ground lug. Have no idea about the other

 

[grsthegreat]

I did a google image search on left item. Says fuel injector sleeve.

 

[Richard]

Wow.... yes that appears to be it! His vehicles were gone and the vehicle for these might have been gone for decades.... but his shelves were jam packed with boxes and boxes and even more boxes of electrical stuff.

So I presumed it was electronic related. Showed to my (electrician) brother in law and he was clueless.

 

[etpm]

Wife went to an online estate auction.... bought a shelving unit and everything that was on it.

It was clear this guy was some form of electronics person. I'm thinking he worked for the original AT&T or Pac Bell or something like that as he had loads of things that were phone related.

Mouse is there to show some scale. It's pretty clear the item on the right bolts down to something and a wire would seem to connect to it with the screw down crimper.

The thing on the left has me perplexed. In the plumbing world it would "simply" be a reducer from say a full inch copper pipe to 1/4" copper tubing. I can't imagine this is for plumbing as he had nearly a dozen of them. Then again, I can't imagine putting in a 1" thick wire on one side and dropping it down to Cat-5 on the other side. The scale is just confusing to me.

So....here it is.

Also, the guy had a pristine Western Electric (recitifer?) tube 355-A which is monster sized, wrapped in its box with all the protective stuffing in there. He had some interesting things I gotta say.

(do these things have any value other than melting down copper? I might throw them on ebay but....it would help to know what they are first!!)



View attachment 831996

That tube is easily worth over 300 bucks. Too bad it's not an audio tube. It is basically a switch.

 

[grsthegreat]

Very odd, the grounding lug is similar to ones they still sell today for electrical field.

 

[Richard]

Too bad it's not an audio tube.

"someone I know, knows someone who knows someone" and this someone had a third cousin twice removed....

None the less... his buddy built his own tube amp using these monsters. Posted a picture of them and OMG, these things are glowing BRIGHT blue (as I recall) but they really stuck out. They didn't "glow" like most pedestiran tubes, these things were (are) monsters.

I don't know if he used them as a rectifier tube or what.....but visually it was impressive enough that I thought 'Gee.....it would be cool to simply build a light box to put it in and let it shine"

Then I stop and think.... it was essentially free with the other things (wife only paid $25 for entire shelving unit contents) so if it sold and she got $20 on up, it alone essentially paid for her entire haul. (got some interesting things but these I've mentioned were to me the most interesting)

 

[Richard]

David meets Goliath.....

 

[etpm]

"someone I know, knows someone who knows someone" and this someone had a third cousin twice removed....

None the less... his buddy built his own tube amp using these monsters. Posted a picture of them and OMG, these things are glowing BRIGHT blue (as I recall) but they really stuck out. They didn't "glow" like most pedestiran tubes, these things were (are) monsters.

I don't know if he used them as a rectifier tube or what.....but visually it was impressive enough that I thought 'Gee.....it would be cool to simply build a light box to put it in and let it shine"

Then I stop and think.... it was essentially free with the other things (wife only paid $25 for entire shelving unit contents) so if it sold and she got $20 on up, it alone essentially paid for her entire haul. (got some interesting things but these I've mentioned were to me the most interesting)

Tubes are kind of wonderful devices. Unlike sold state devices they can or may be operated in ways that they were not meant for and get good results. I am not saying that solid state devices cannot be bent to the wills of their users but in my experience vacuum tubes lend themselves to uses the designers did not anticipate more often than the designers of solid state stuff. I really like vacuum tube audio but at the same time rely on and love solid state stuff for my CNC machines.
Eric

 

[California]

A friend ran a store where he sold stuff from tech auctions. Mostly outdated computer stuff. I bought a lot of items that got retired for Y2K updates, and re-sold them on Ebay for 3-4 x what I paid. DLT 20/40 mb tape backup drives for example, that went on eBay for $175 back then. Overall I sold about $14k of gear before the Y2K stuff dried up.

One purchase was three huge vacuum tubes more than a ft tall. One sold on Ebay with top bid $90. I looked up the buyer and found he stocks impossible-to-find critical phone system infrastructure gear, for old systems still in use in remote corners of the world. He bought my two remaining tubes, as I recall $100 each. More than 10x markup. Hate to think what he marked them up to some desperate end user.

Don't sell that rectifier tube too cheap. The first place I looked, a generic copy is $70. Genuine Western Electric, $95. They were used in phone central-office systems.