A few days ago, after my wife Lisa read my first post about the antique radio I got from her parents' house, she said, "You rescued it, huh?  I'm pretty sure I asked you if you wanted it."  She sounded kind of annoyed. 

I said, "Yeah, but if I hadn't wanted it, it was going to the auction house, right?  So I figure I rescued it." 

Next thing you know, she was poking around in the back of the radio, seeing if she could locate some sort of identifying mark.  Sure enough, there was a yellowed old card pasted on the inside of the cabinet, which said:



Well, duh!  I should have seen that before.  So it's a Silvertone, Model 6379.  I used to have a Silvertone guitar amp, many moons ago.  At that time (early to mid-1960s), lots of budding guitarists started out with Silvertone equipment from Sears, before possibly graduating to Fender or Gibson or whatever.  But I think this is the first Silvertone radio I've ever had.  Our main radio when I was growing up was an old brown bakelite Zenith that looked like this:



Also, like just about every other kid at that time, I had to have my own transistor radio.  Mine was a Magnavox with a brown leather case, like this:



But this Silvertone Model 6379 is definitely from an earlier era (ca. 1940, perhaps?)  One thing I find interesting about it is that it was battery-powered.  The words are kind of blurry in the first image of this post, but below the serial number it says "Battery Operated Receiver."  I had wondered before why there was no AC power cord coming out of the cabinet, just a four-pronged connector that may or may not have led to the power supply.



If anyone has any further information on this model radio, for example its history, the sort of battery or batteries it used, its approximate value, or what it might take to restore it and/or get it operational again, please leave a comment, or e-mail me at jdhunt@surfbest.net.