Deflation anecdote:
My late grandfather bought a record player off an American GI leaving Taiwan in the 60s
The price? ~40,000 NTD which would have been enough for a plot of land in the heart of modern Taipei or a house+storefront at the time.
My late grandfather passed early so I don't have many recollections of him, all I have are stories. He seemed like a classy dude, smoked a pipe, played go, listened to opera -- enjoyed life. A well respected academic turned merchant, how could he have made the mistake to exchange money for technology which will only get cheaper over time?
Was it worth it to exchange money for a device that plays music instead of another plot of land? The elders bring up this question from time to time.
I've chewed on this a lot over the years. Hell yes 👀 "what is this noise?" "why is it so loud?" "what are they saying?" are the curiosities the money bought as my grandfather would blast opera records to wake up my aunts and uncles every Sunday. My aunts and uncles all have fond memories of the record player, even memories of how my grandpa was chastised for frivolous spending.
Was it worth it to get access to technology marginally sooner? The record player would have been infinitely cheaper just a short decade later. Whether or not by coincidence, both my uncles went on to work in tech, and one even contributed to many instruction sets used in audio decoding for CPUs. My tech background mostly comes from my uncles who let me play around with engineering samples to build computers, and got me on the Internet very early. Perhaps if it wasn't for my grandpa deciding to bring home a record player instead of sitting on another plot of land, I wouldn't have had the proper knowledge, skillset, and curiosity to be pulled into Bitcoin. The butterfly effect of my grandpa's decision put me in the right place at the right time. Maybe that extra decade of opera listening made all the difference, fun to think about.
Tl Dr; trying to find what this record player looks like, all I have are descriptions from 70+ year old Taiwanese folks. I spent hours on Google, the image above was the closest but the record player portion still isn't right. It was some sort of shelf instead of a top lid 🤔 any antique stereo experts on nostr? Will zap ⚡ a note that can help with details to help find the correct one
