AUBURN – Back in the late 1940s, they weren’t so unusual, radios with built-in glass decanters for scotch and bourbon or tiny slots for pipes and tobacco. Today, the Porto Baradio and Smokerette stand out in Ray Fannin’s dining room, glass tumblers and instruction books in amazing condition all these decades later.

And it takes something to stand out in Fannin’s antique radio collection.

When he tells people about his hobby, many don’t quite get it. “They think I have little boxes with dials,” Fannin said.

His radios are disguised as leather-bound books, as model cars, as an old crank-style phone. (The last is turned on by lifting up the ear piece.) Being in great condition is a prerequisite, he said. He’s not a huge fan of buying and sprucing them up. And most work.

One “Hopalong Cassidy” radio by Arvin from the 1950s had never been out of its original box until a seller removed it to take pictures for an eBay auction. The silver radio practically gleams.

“That’s probably the newest/oldest radio I have,” Fannin said.

“A lot of these are radios that people’s parents bought. When they got older, they just put them in the attic.”

His collection starts in the 1920s and stops in the 1980s. As a kid, Fannin can remember going to his grandfather’s house and listening to his 1938 Philco.

“When he died in 1968, I asked if I could have that radio. That was my first one,” Fannin said.

He listened to the radio a lot as a kid. After school, it was the “Lone Ranger” or Gene Autry.

“I’ve been a stereo nut ever since I was a teenager,” said Fannin.

He owns several models of Zenith Trans-Oceanics, both military and civilian. Another, shaped like an old microphone, has “KGA 1510” printed on it; that’s the only AM station that radio received without the owner fiddling with its insides.

An old Dahlberg motel Pillow Speaker radio used to hang on the back of the bed and played for dimes. Its dial numbers are upside down so you could read it lying on your back.

“I’ve never got a radio as a gift, which is good,” Fannin said. “If I buy it, I like it.”