The Sony TPS-L2 Walkman, the cassette player used by Chris Pratt’s character Star-Lord in Marvel’s smash hit Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is currently selling for hundreds of dollars on Ebay.
The Guardians of the Galaxy movies play heavily with 80’s nostalgia, using the smart conceit of young Peter Quill (Star-Lord) being abducted from Earth when he was young, leaving his relationship with all things Earth stuck firmly in the time of the mullet.
Nowhere is this relationship more evident than in the music of the film. Both the Guardians films have soundtracks filled with the greatest hits the 80’s had to offer, all thanks to cassette tapes Awesome Mix 1 and Awesome Mix 2 that Quill plays on his classic Walkman.
Awesome tunes
Unsurprisingly, the Walkman has had a massive resurgence in its popularity thanks the the film and is now selling for hundreds, and in some cases thousands of dollars on Ebay.
The TPS-L2 was the first portable cassette player that Sony brought to market; it was first released in 1979 in Japan, and the following year in the US and the UK. When it first came out the TPS-L2 was $200, which works out at about $589 (about £455, AU$801) when adjusted for today's prices.
While the Walkman is a collector's edition for its historical value, the current prices are unprecedented, with used and even non-functioning devices being listed at hundreds of dollars, presumably for cosplay purposes.
Where cosplayers are going to run into problems are getting their hands on the orange MDR-3L2 headphones, with there currently being no headphones available, and only certain of the full sets containing the orange not the black versions.
Without spoiling anything about the movie there is another device that gets mentioned, and in case you’re wondering, it hasn’t benefited from Star-Lord’s magic touch in quite the same way.
