SOME ITEMS THAT YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN OR BE ABLE TO ADVISE ME ON

These are the items that iam interested in selling.. Could you help me with some details on the goods, history, origin etc. are these worth anything and if so who would i contact with regards to selling them? and the best way to sell them ie auction etc APOLOGISE IF YOU HAVE ALREADY RECEIVED THIS E-MAIL JPEGS ARE AVAILABLE AT YOUR REQUEST MANY THANX return e-mail address krissrolo(a)aol.com UK VEHICLE REG N 64 C0N item 1 hand carved round table with metal chain link in the middle item 2 magnum laurent perrier vintage 1988 champagne item 3 miniture football on stand from euro96 signed by pele and bobby charlton item 4 is a bit more interesting. its a protana minifon attache, as u will see ive enclosed notes from a web site regarding this and you will see back in the 50's it cost $340.00 so i could imagine this to be worth a bit. it also has an original tape inside i do not know what is on this tape, but judging by who made it and the cost of the machine, the tape could have some important information on it. heres the note..... The Minifon, developed in the early 1950s by Monske GMBH of Hanover(or by Protona GMBH- I'm not certain), was an ultra-miniaturized, battery operated magnetic recording device. It could not (initially at least) record the full range of sounds and was thus limited to voice recording, but it did offer easy portability in a very small package. The idea of offering a pocket dictating machine was novel, since dictation had previously been done in the office. However, it was thought that people like salesmen could take the machine "on the road" with them. Once on the market, the Minifon's promoters discovered that many people took advantage of the recorder's small size to make secret recordings to be used as evidence, as in court.<BR> <BR> The "legitimate" use of the Minifon, as a dictating machine, was somewhat problematical. Recordings made on regular dictating equipment were usually letters, and thus were normally sent almost immediately to a typist. The Minifon offered no obvious advantages over standard dictation equipment for office use, but its developers hoped to cultivate new uses for dictation equipment, such as stock taking in warehouses, or the use of the machine as a substitute for note-taking by reporters, insurance adjusters, salesmen, and others. In its original form, the Minifon was a wire recorder, using a type of wire medium developed by the Armour Research Foundation of Chicago and employed in many similar devices since the late 1940s. The machine at its introduction in 1952 had a recording time of one hour, which was remarkably long, and weighed only about 3 pounds at a time when a typical office dictating machine weighed upwards of 10 pounds. It accomplished this small size and light weight in part through the use of miniature tubes and clever mechanical design. The basic machine cost $289.50-- a price that sounds high today but was very much in line with competing office dictating machines. The parent company attempted to set up distribution, sales and service networks in the United States. It established a business office called the Minifon Export Corp in New York, and an existing company, Harvey Radio in New York City became the main distributor. Although smaller tape recorders appeared at about the same time, the main competition in the voice recording field was from an American company, Mohawk, which made a small, battery-operated cartridge tape recorder called the Migetape. Both products sold less than 10,000 units per year in the U.S.<BR> After a few years, the Minifon was modified to use transistors and magnetic tape, further lowering its weight and cost. By 1962 the basic machine weighed in at only 1.5 pounds. Competition by this time had helped bring the cost down to $249.50. The Minifon after about 1962 was distributed by the international conglomerate ITT through its subsidiary in the U.S., Federal Electric Corp. A little later, distribution was taken over by the ITT Distributor Products Division in Lodi, New Jersey. (I don't know whether these were the same company with different names) By the time ITT became associated with this product, it had taken on the name of Minifon "Attache," and a new line of models and options appeared. These included a hi-fi model, the 978H, which sold for $330.50.Usinga two-track, 1/4 inch tape cartridge operating at 1 7/8 inches per second, the machine claimed a frequency response of up to 12,000 Hz, plus or minus 3db. The coming of magnetic tape did not completely displace wire. The Model 240 series of recorders introduced in the early 1960s were probably the last wire recorders in regular production. The 240L, at a price of $269.50 used a special long-playing wire cartridge that held 4 hours of wire. Otherwise it looked like both the tape model and the 240S, which used a 2-hour wire cartridge and sold for $249.50. Another innovation was the introduction of more conventional recorders. After years of offering only "half" of a complete dictation system, Minifon finally developed a restyled, non-portable "office" machine, mainly for use by a transcriber, with pedal controls. By the mid-1960s, Minifon was trying to market its machines as multi-purpose devices suitable for nearly any recording need. In addition to the hi-fi and long-playing machines, the company offered an astounding variety of optional equipment such as foot controls, microphones, external amplifiers and loudspeakers, headsets, external power supplies, telephone recording attachments, conference recording adapters. One of the most interesting options were the miniature microphones intended to allow users to make "spy" recordings. In addition to a small tie-clip microphone, the Minifon could be equipped with a microphone disguised as a wrist- watch.