The radios are not for sale

A retired teacher in Mansoura repairs old valve radios in a small room off his kitchen. He finds them in junk shops, takes them apart on sheets of newspaper, and can spend weeks on a single dial. When one finally hums back to life he plays it for whoever is home, then starts on the next.

Everyone who sees the room says the same thing. You should sell these. Collectors would pay. Put them online. Open a little shop.

They mean it kindly, and they may well be right that people would pay.

But it is worth seeing what he already has, because it is rare. Time, a little money, some skill, and work that fills him with joy. Many people spend their whole lives trying to arrange exactly that and never quite manage it.

Making it a business would not add profit on top of the joy. It would trade one for the other. Selling means choosing the radios that sell over the radios he loves, working to someone else's date, answering complaints, putting a price on his weeks, hurrying the dial. Push hard on the money and the pleasure tends to go quiet. Protect the pleasure and the money tends to stay small. Rarely do both grow together.

There is nothing wrong with work for profit; most of us need it. And now and then a passion does become a good living. But when someone has found something they do purely for its own sake, the most generous advice is often the plainest one. Leave it as it is.

The radios do not need a market. They already have the one listener who matters.