Episode 10 of the RePlay Podcast has arrived and it features Glenn Streeter, the former owner of Rock-Ola Manufacturing and Antique Apparatus who spent some 45 years in the industry.
He got his start by selling antique radios and still collects them. In fact, during the podcast, he showed off an Atwater Kent breadboard from 1923 while chatting with our podcast host Randy Chilton.
He also told a story about Freddie Mercury coming into his shop with Roger Taylor. The Queen legends each bought a jukebox and signed an Antique Apparatus apron that has dozens of celeb autographs. Freddie got a Wurlitzer 850 Peacock model that Streeter sold him for $6,500. That same jukebox went for more than $500,000 at auction in 2023.
But that’s not even the most expensive of his jukes. That record belongs to a Swiss dealer who took two of his Peacock models and covered the outside of the cabinet with blue lapis and gold-plated it.
“They sold the two of them back when the British pound was $3 and they sold two of them for a quarter-million pounds apiece,” he said.
In 1992, Streeter bought the Chicago-based Rock-Ola for $1,167,000 and ended up moving it to Southern California.
Click here to watch the whole thing.