Call me a chicken…

Let me use an analogy we are all familiar with: nobody needs a Rolex. A $25 battery operated Casio keeps better time than a $25K mechanical Rolex. But Rolex is not about timekeeping – it’s about luxury and prestige. Or, what the watch snobs would call: “The pride of ownership.”

The ICOM 7851 is the Rolex of radios. A wonderful piece of equipment, a testimony to Japanese workmanship and engineering. But you don’t really need one. Nobody does. For a vast majority of amateurs, the humble IC7300 offers almost the same level of enjoyment for less than one tenth of 7851’s price.

Yet for literally a handful of amateurs, investing $22,000 into a radio is easily justifiable: the flagship ICOM model offers much more than flagship performance. It comes with pride of ownership, belonging to a very exclusive club, a bragging right, QSL card photo opportunity and prestigious QRZ page. There are very few investments which would elevate your ham status so powerfully as a brand spanking new 7851.

Here is an interesting piece of information: for 8 years of production, less than four hundred IC-7851 have been manufactured and sold worldwide! The assembly line for this radio consists of just two technicians. There is even a website where owners can register their name next to the serial number. Less than four hundred people out of 8 billion. Talk about exclusivity and luxury.

Actually I’ve just searched the entire QRZ call-back database for IC-7851. Search result: 27 entries, two of them from Australia.

To be perfectly honest, I would never invest that much money into a single radio. That would be way too extravagant, and perhaps even arrogant (actual reason: My wife would divorce me in a second). I am even too scared to unseal the box, and just peek inside; as a dealer I am merely a guardian, taking good care of it for the first owner. Yet I completely understand those who are eager to pay their way into a very prestigious and very exclusive club. Hats off.

And then, there are those amateurs who are in a league of their own. Describing his contest station, Tim, K3LR mentions in passing that “…transceivers are twelve ICOM IC-7851’s and one ICOM IC-7850 (two 7851’s are hot spares)…”

As they say: only in America.

Yes, I am a chicken. But are you ready to join the club?