This is my Sony Walkman WM-51 that I bought in 1987. I can quite clearly remember buying it in the Electronics section of Lewis’ on the Headrow in Leeds (long gone now). It was the first Sony Walkman I ever owned, I’d had numerous cheap Aiwa and the like lookalikes before but this was the real McCoy. I have a memory of it costing £100 and it was the first thing I ever bought on credit – paying £15 a month for it over 6 months…
It was my pride and joy. It came with built in headphones (as well as an extra headphone socket) the wires of which wound into the body, but most impressive of all, it came with a rechargeable battery so the cost of replacement batteries was immediately removed (it could also be powered by a single HP7 (AA in today’s money) battery if necessary).
Remarkably the motor still runs on it, unfortunately the “rubber” band that makes all the bits and pieces rotate has clearly given up the ghost so it won’t play any more, though I suspect if I got that fixed it would still work well…I certainly used it constantly for at least 10 years before I replaced it with a Sony mini disc (which I still have somewhere).
