Replacing the Original Sapphire Radio

So, I pulled the VW out of storage last August and I've thought about restoring it ever since. After some consideration, I decided that this was the best time in my life to work on restoring the car, so I started my research. Many of the resources that I had used 15 years ago were still around (Wolfsburg West, TheSamba, etc.) and there are now many more that I had never heard of. For the most part, anything that you could think of on a VW is available on the internet through retailers or private parties.

I started looking on eBay and The Samba for things that I had always wanted to replace on the car. The washer bottle for instance, found it on eBay. The ultimate accessory that was missing from the car ever since I had it, the original Sapphire I AM radio was missing. I researched VW radio history and came across this web page that explained it all. I've heard of Rich on The Samba and from what I've read, he does great work in the Sapphire radio restoration field. He'll even upgrade your 6 volt AM radio to 12 volt, get FM stations and add an AUX connection. I researched Sapphire radios and what they go for for about month or two on eBay and The Samba for the most part. Many of the radios being offered for my model year - 1963 - were worn out with broken knobs and buttons, dirty and did not work. Finding a radio with knobs and preset buttons that were intact and not stained was most important to me. After some patience, I finally found one:

It needed some cleaning, but the major things that I wanted were there: clean knobs, preset buttons, it worked and it even had a very clean undamaged face plate, I couldn't wait to install it.

Seeing a complete dash board without a giant empty hole in the middle of it was pretty awesome.