Tube Price Index
What collectors actually paid, per tube, by variant. Every row is one variant: the dot marks the median price a buyer paid, and the box spans the middle half of sales. Compiled from 4,642 completed sales across 250 tube types.
Prices are delivered — shipping included, and matched pairs and quads divided out to a per-tube figure. That is what a buyer actually parts with, and it is why a single tube can exceed its own hammer price.
Price by Brand
Sorted by median. A brand needs 3 or more recorded sales to appear here; a two-sale median is noise wearing a number.
Price by Condition
The new-old-stock premium, measured rather than assumed: roughly a fifth over used at the median, widening sharply in the top quartile.
Price by Getter Shape
The getter is the metallic flash deposited inside the glass to absorb residual gas. Its shape is a reliable marker of era and factory, and collectors pay for it.
A note on these names. They are collector vernacular, not manufacturer terminology. No datasheet in this archive uses them — across 2,682 passages mentioning getters, not one says “halo getter”. The vocabulary comes from how the market itself describes these tubes, and we have normalised it to the shapes below so that a single variant is not split across a dozen spellings.
Types Covered
Every tube type with at least 2 brands of 3 or more recorded sales. The index grows as more sales are collected — a type appears here the moment it has enough of a market to describe honestly.
| Type | Brands | Sales | Median range |
|---|---|---|---|
| EF86 | 11 | 196 | $12 – $113 |
| 5AR4 | 11 | 182 | $29 – $411 |
| ECC82 | 13 | 181 | $17 – $124 |
| 5751 | 7 | 186 | $29 – $165 |
| 5U4GB | 6 | 176 | $13 – $43 |
| 12AY7 | 7 | 179 | $27 – $110 |
| 5Y3 | 11 | 170 | $15 – $103 |
| 12AX7 | 15 | 167 | $10 – $143 |
| 12AT7 | 11 | 154 | $12 – $67 |
| 6SN7 | 10 | 159 | $25 – $107 |
| 6550 | 7 | 160 | $47 – $285 |
| 6SL7 | 9 | 158 | $20 – $384 |
| 2A3 | 11 | 154 | $53 – $152 |
| EL34 | 16 | 152 | $25 – $154 |
| EL84 | 14 | 127 | $17 – $106 |
| 6L6 | 8 | 112 | $23 – $61 |
| 7591 | 8 | 107 | $26 – $57 |
| KT88 | 10 | 103 | $39 – $250 |
| 6922 | 8 | 96 | $25 – $229 |
| 6CA7 | 11 | 87 | $32 – $205 |
| KT66 | 6 | 79 | $47 – $248 |
| ECC81 | 9 | 73 | $18 – $60 |
| ECC83 | 9 | 63 | $26 – $93 |
| 7308 | 7 | 71 | $53 – $196 |
| 300B | 5 | 63 | $88 – $888 |
| 6BQ5 | 7 | 47 | $15 – $81 |
| 5814 | 5 | 53 | $22 – $46 |
| 5881 | 5 | 36 | $25 – $53 |
| 0A2WA | 4 | 28 | $8 – $12 |
| 7868 | 2 | 12 | $40 – $44 |
| 0B2WA | 2 | 9 | $6 – $10 |
The axis is linear and stops short of the highest sale, so that one outlier cannot squash every other row into the left edge. A row whose range continues past that point is marked with an arrow, and the data table gives its true high.
Medians are used throughout, not averages. On the 12AX7 the Telefunken average is $209 while the median is $86 — a single exceptional sale carries the mean. The median describes a tube you could actually go and buy.