Found several of these today. I've never seen them before now! Holding one up to the light shows what appears to be a vacuum tube inside. Some are marked with an eagle and swastika.
Are these indeed tubes and are they collectable?


Thanks,

Corby

They were a standardized line of tubes used in German military sets.

We do not have an abundance of surplus German military equipment here in the US so these tubes are uncommon in our country but I would not consider them rare by any means. They are collectable and I have a number of them in my collection. Most tube collectors here in the US tend to focus on American tubes so IMHO there is not a big demand for them.

Usually the tube number contains a 2P or 12P. The 2P ones are dry battery type 1.9V pentodes and the 12P ones are for 12 volt pentodes that were used military vehicle equipment.

Bob, K2GLO

I really like German tubes, they're so different from american tubes.
Here are the ones in my collection.

The swastika and number is a werhmacht/Heer (army) waffenampt (weapons office) stamp, a proofmark that it was accepted for military service after being tested. It's a tube carrier/protector with a tube residing inside, unless the tube is gone. The tubes will also likely have a waffenampt, BAL (Luftwaffe), or eagle&swastika with M underneath (Kriegsmarine). The Germans tried to reduce the types of tubes produced during the war and so sets were designed to use the same tube type for every function or only two tube types in the same radio. From what I can tell they were way ahead of the allies in radio gear designed for use below 30MHz, we smoked them in radar. Just after end of the war the allies demanded that troops smash every German military radio they came across, but the order was rescinded after a time. This helps explain why so few sets/parts/tubes remain and go for hi dolla to collectors.

Some info on German ww2 electronics;
http://www.laud.no/ww2/
This guy has an impressive collection.

I had one of the Siemens morale sets, multiband with the Luftwaffe eagle on the front doors. You pushed a button or something and the doors popped open to reveal the front of the radio. Unfortunately the set had been de-tubed and so I was unable to do a thing with it. Internal construction was eerily similar to the postwar import radios. Later the same seller had an identical set with the tubes in, but the price was off my chart. I sold it and a couple wooden Japanese field phones to some guy that said he was making a museum in Missouri or something. If I had to stuff that radio with tubes for the prices I see those WW2 tubes for on ebay, it would be a very very valuable radio investment. At least up front.