1937 Emerson Mini-Tombstone Radio Model AU190, all Original in a Wonderfully Aged Butterscotch Catalin Cabinet, in Mint, Serviced and Working Condition

In a Nutshell
Emerson's Famous 1937 Mini-Tombstone Radio AU-190 in Aged Butterscotch Catalin, Serviced and Working

Introduction:
The documented colour variants of this 1937 Emerson mini-tombstone radio AU190 as well as its very similar younger sister BT245 are marbled alabaster/yellow, marbled onyx/green, marbled walnut/brown, marbled tomato/red, and marbled lapis lazuli/blue, with collector's prices increasing along the list. The differences in value between the green and brown and the red and blue versions are small and depend on condition. Ref.1 below shows an early ad (pict.31) that only lists two variants: natural and Brasilian onyx, which correspond to the above yellow and green versions, respectively.
Incidentally here is a puzzle: how comes that all instances of the radio have a speaker cloth with the outside going wings pointing upwards, whereas the only available vintage ad (pict.31) shows it upside down, matching the trend of the grille cutouts?
Catalin casting was an art, performed by skilled and experienced workers (part of the reason why in 1942 production by the American Catalin Corporation of New York (70% market share) was stopped). Mixing different colours and mixing them while casting was a creative act and resulted in individual cabinets, which can be easily tracked due to their unique fingerprint-like patterns. The cabinets for the early AU190 were produced by the Fiberloid Corporation of Springfield, Massachusetts, which called the material "opalon". According to the very worth reading article by Ed Lyon (ref.2) about the Marblette Corporation, the cabinet could also have been made by Marblette. Ed Lyon argues that the extreme color variability of the Emerson tombstone cabinets may have been the result of "poor process control at Marblette"; collectors should applaud them for that. Compared with its four sisters the yellow version has only faint swirls.

Additional information:
ref.1: http://uv201.com/Radio_Pages/emerson_au190.htm
ref.2: http://radioatticarchives.com/features/lyon_marblette.htm
ref.3: http://www.nostalgiaair.org

About my radio:
The cabinet has no cracks, chips or scratches. I have just wiped but not polished it not to remove the waferthin alcohol surface layer, normally building up on catalin. Since the original color was a white alabaster, when polishing an aged butterscotch catalin cabinet, one risks to generate white spots. Then by trying to equalize the surface eventually one ends up with a totally white alabaster cabinet, which is not what collectors want. It is very hard to take pictures to show the correct hue of the cabinet. In words I would call it to be between yellow and orange, and I firmly believe, the radio has never been polished ever in its 73 years life.
The radio has its original speaker cloth, knobs, decal and dial lens. It even has its original resistive wire power cord (see pict.27b), which did not make it necessary to adapt the radio to a non-resistive regular power cord, as shown in pict.s 27b,c,d. The chassis has been electronically serviced, all tubes tested, and new filter capacitors installed in the original shell (pict.30). Finally I custom-made a back plane from cardboard, in order to enhance the radio's butterscotch appearance. Its holding screws as well as the 4 feet are original. Please e-mail me (Kris) for any questions, ich spreche Deutsch, je parle Français.

For the techies only:
Several smaller size AA5 (All American 5-tube) radios of the late 1930's used tube sets with a high (compared to later designs) 0.3A heater current, the heater voltages of which do not add up to the line voltage of 125V. The voltages of the Emerson AU190 tubes (see table below) add up to 68V (2x25 + 3x6). Two 6V dial lamps dimmed to 4.5V each are connected in series bringing the voltage up to 77V. The missing 48V are dropped in an extra resistive wire in the line cord (145Ω, see pict.27a), thus taking about 15 Watt (or about 40%) heat out of the radio. This radio has even the 2x40Ω surge limit resistors bypassing the dial lights burried into the line cord. The radio works just fine and the power cord gets handwarm, whitewashing its bad reputation as a "curtain burner". The brown AU190 for sale too, follows pict.27a, the green one had its power cord cut, which had to be replaced by implementing a diode dropper (pict.27d).

Here are the specifications:

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