Guardians of the Galaxy 2 spawns roaring trade in vintage Walkmans

Forget wine or gold bullion – it’s time to sink all your savings into vintage Walkmans.

Thanks in no small measure to Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord from ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ always having his unit to hand, the original portable Sony cassette player is getting a new lease of life.

And from being more or less worthless a few years back, through to becoming vintage collector’s items more recently, they now have price tags in the hundreds of pounds.

The TPS-L2 model, the specific player used by Pratt in the movies and the first to be manufactured by Sony in Japan, back in 1979, is of particular value.

They weren’t cheap to begin with, costing around £150 back then – nearly £700 today accounting for inflation.

One working model, complete with box and original headphones, is going for nearly £1000 on eBay, with even non-working models aimed at Guardians of the Galaxy cosplayers being sold for several hundreds of pounds.

Other Walkman models are also fetching very respectable prices – notably the WM-DD9, which is considered by some to be the ‘holy grail’ of Walkmans in terms of sound quality, selling for in the region of £500 for a unit in good condition.

Time to get up in the loft…

‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’ is out now across the UK.

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