In a Nutshell
The radio is very collectible as it is beautiful by itself, not only being famous for its role in one of the prominent holiday movies, coming up soon

Introduction:
Historian, graphic designer and radio enthusiast Jeremy Hopkin has written a lovely story about an authentic Westinghouse 780X Christmas Story radio (ref.1), comparing it to stills from the original movie. Nine year old boy Ralphie Parker 's life is dominated by his one wish, to get a Red Ryder BB gun with a compass for Christmas. He uses various tricks to convince his parents to get him this gift, steadfastly ignoring the stereotype "You'll shoot your eye out". He is listening on this very Westinghouse radio to a show "Little Orphan Annie" and waiting for his Secret Society Decoder Pin, not knowing that the message would be deciphered as "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine", since the show was sponsored since 1934 by the Ovaltine company. Another famous prop in this movie is a gorgeous lamp shaped as a lady's leg with fishnet-stocking that his father had won. The movie, directed by Bob Clark, was first released exactly 30 years ago (Nov.18, 1983) and has since become a holiday classic and is shown numerous times on television during the Christmas season. Last year the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Both radio models 780X and 780Y were only produced by Westinghouse Canada for the Canadian market of 1940/41, and differ essentially by the number of bars over the speaker grille (4 vs. 3). The radios are very beautiful with their many left-right matched veneer selections, and slanted control section, the radio in the movie, however, is in terrible condition, with non-authentic knobs, and a missing tuning eye (they replaced it with a red lamp). Technically the radio is a superb performer, with 6 automatic tuning push-buttons made from real tortoise catalin, a tuning eye (mine replaced with a NOS/NIB Westinghouse 6U5), a factory installed switchable Phono input, that can be used to connect cellphones, mp3 players, etc., as well as a large 12" field coil speaker.

Additional information:
ref.1: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremyhopkin/sets/72157601071442935/
ref.2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Story


About my Radio:
My radio is in near-mint condition, with original finish and decals, very few unoffending scratches, original knobs, original speaker and speaker cloth, no replacement parts (yes, not recapped), and 6 Westinghouse branded tubes, including a new old stock unused magic eye tube 6U5. The chassis has been thoroughly cleaned and moveable parts treated with contact spray. A youtube video showing the radio playing is in preparation, meanwhile the raw 30 MB Quicktime .mov file can be downloaded here. Please e-mail me (Kris) for any questions, ich spreche Deutsch, je parle Français.

For the techies only:
No techies this time, it just works fine

Here are the specifications:

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