Posted 9 years ago
Brightfall
(5 items)
This is a nice example of an Astor Mickey valve radio that I picked up at an antiques stores a few weeks ago. Astor was a a major producer of radios in Australia starting in the 1920s. They produced a series of radios originally called Mickey Mouse, and used pictures of Mickey in their advertising. One small problem was that Astor forget to ask Disney if that was OK! Needless to say that Astor lost that battle and therefore changed the name of their radios to the "Astor Mickey”. This series took a number of forms over the years, but the style of this particular radio ran from about 1939 for about 16 years. Astor produced this radio in a huge range of colours, such as the regular bakelite brown, through to white, blues, greens, yellow, red, pink and some variations with white through them (nicknamed clouds). This Mickey just needed a clean and polish and is working well.
Thank you, yes it is a nice colour. I used Greygate Paste Polishing No. 5 (from the UK from memory). Although I have used a metal polish called Brasso here in Aus too. The Greygate seems to leave less of a residue though. I am not an expert, as only have cleaned up four cases so far, but have found if you wash it in soapy water first to get rid of any grime, and then a fair bit of elbow grease with the polish they seem to come up ok. It is probably is also going to depend on the condition of the bakelite first though. Hope that helps!