Antique radios from the collection of Jim Welch, all restored by Columbia’s Gerald Cromer

The Fairfield County Museum is hard at work preparing for its upcoming exhibit, “The Radio Age.”

The featured exhibit will open during the town’s “Turning Back the Clock” Festival March 19 and will be available for viewing throughout the month.

The sounds of music and broadcasts from yesteryear, will whisk museum visitors aboard a time machine racing backwards into simpler, gentler days. Along the way they’ll find radios, radios, and more radios. Dozens of them were selected from a number of coveted statewide collections.

There’ll be elaborate cathedral and tombstone space gobblers of the 1920s and  sleek, hip transistors from the 60s. There’ll be basic and humble simplicities fashioned from little more than pine board and copper wire. There’ll be an Atwater–Kent.

“Atwater-Kent,” Columbia’s Gerald Cromer, antique radio buff and restoration specialist said, “is a name everybody’s familiar with. Actually, in the 1920s there were over 3,000 radio manufacturers. Only a few survived. In Sumter, SC, there was The Sumter Radio Company, run by two brothers. That company, as many, lasted just a few years.”

Only three of the Sumter Radios are known to remain. Cromer has one of them.

“It’s surprising,” he said, “but rarity does not drive up the price of an antique radio. The value is determined by who wants it and what they’re willing to pay.”

“There are those considered ‘top dollar items,’ said Cromer. “A Zenith Stratosphere went up on EBAY with a price tag of $50,000. I even sold a radio once for $17,000. But I’ve also picked up one or two from the side of the road.”

Cromer, who has recently put restorations on hold, has been asked to repair and restore family heirlooms when the cost of repairs far exceeded the monetary worth of the radio.

“Some old radios aren’t worth more than a few dollars,” he said.

In other words, there is a remote chance that Grandpa’s radio sitting in your attic could be worth a fortune, but it’s probably worth no more than however much you thought of Grandpa.

The Fairfield County Museum is located in the heart of Winnsboro at 231 South Congress Street. On Festival Day, the Museum will open at 10 am and remain open until 3 pm.