SOLD

I have a vintage 'Realistic' ^[1] branded 'HIGH POWER VIDEO / AUDIO TAPE ERASER', cat. No. 44-233A. It is rated at 120VAC 8.5A ^[2]

I got it years ago because it is cool and it is a giant electromagnet.

It works. It erases tapes (I tried it).

It is powerful enough to destroy some electronics. It won't erase the data on your mechanical hard drive, but it will stop it from working (I think it manages to throw the heads out of calibration).

I am selling it because I have too much stuff that I keep only because they are things that can do cool things.

Here are pictures of the device, along with a video of me using it to pick up a full can of diced tomatoes.

• https://imgur.com/a/J99QG6K

$25 OBO pickup in Center City.

Backstory:

These were meant for situations where a lot of tapes got cycled regularly, which wasn't uncommon seeing as there was no streaming video so people recorded off of TV and radio in large blocks (to find that song you wanted or to time-shift TV for later).

Also, not too long ago, security cameras recorded onto a rotating set of tapes, so this would be useful for that.

Anyway, giant electromagnets to the rescue. You could use this to erase a tape in a few seconds without damaging the physical media (just the contents). Nifty!

^[1] 'Realistic' was a Radioshack store label like 'Insignia' is for BestBuy, and it was well regarded since they licensed the US rights to import (mostly Japanese) products from brands that were big names overseas but had no appeal here at the time.

^[2] Residential circuit breakers are commonly set to break at 120VAC at 15A. This will pull more than half of that!