Glad I'm not the only one who got a twitchy eye reading that.

I am really confused now. I know Discman is Sony's name, but generally people refer to any such portable CD player as "discman". At least where I live.
And it's not just regular people, even shops refer to them as dicmans.
Here are some examples to back my claims:

examples

https://www.alza.sk/discmany/18886534.htm
https://aukro.sk/discmany
https://www.mall.sk/discmany
https://discmany.heureka.sk/
https://www.okay.sk/collections/discmany

The only exception seems to be Nay, referring to this category as "Portable CD players".

At least it's not a sony ipod

Yes. The pictured item is a portable cd player, not a Discman.

Apparently SL-SK420 or whatever that says didn't have the same ring to it.

This is an interesting phenomenon called a proprietary eponym, where a brand name becomes synonymous with a product.

Just like walkman and disc man, in my language we call a car satnav a "TomTom" after the brand that popularised it here.

Yeap, Discman was the name used by Sony up until around the year 2000, when they changed it to "CD Walkman".

Probably because they couldn't purchase the other ones at reasonable prices anywhere.

I think you're missing the point. Museums collect this stuff not because it's old, but because it was significant to people at the time and they want to collect it for prosperity. Imagine if they waited until 2050 and then said "Shit! Wasn't there a cd player we all liked at some point? Does anyone have one?" They should have one, they're a museum! Many museums will be maintaining an iPhone collection for example.

Regardless, most people under 30 likely do not have access to a cd player, and I'd guess many never owned one. It's not strange for that to be in a museum even without what I've said above.

Sorry to be the one breaking the bad news, but you might be old yourself if you think like that. Don't sweat it, happens to all of us.

I disagree with you. In the tech industry, 20 years is ancient. If you were born in 1985, 20 years prior that was 1965, and the tech of that decade was very different from the 80s tech.

Imagine someone living in a year where calculator watches were already a thing, and when in a museum displaying one of those radios in wooden cabinets and knobs with the style of the time they said "that's not old!!!!!!"

I had a aftermarket head unit that played mp3 cds in 2002.

I had a mp3 player in 1999.

We were definitely burning cds back then, this woulda come at a premium but the tech was there.

I had that very device right about 2002. Put my whole CD collection on a few mp3 disks. Replaced it a few years later with a 6GB mp3 player.

Sure it was, in America at least. I think I got my first PC that could burn disks in like 1998 and it was a mass marketed Compaq from Circuit City. Napster showed up the next year and CD burning exploded. Napster was dead by 2001.

I had this exact model in 2002. It was a revelation and possibly one of the best portable CD players ever released. You could sit there and tap it all day and it wouldn't skip.

The Colorado Railroad Museum has railroad crossing signals donated by BNSF that are only a few years old. Museums will gladly accept both old and new.

Even bicycles are still sold =:-)

If I bought one today, I'd spend the extra $10 for a rechargeable unit. The one bad memory I have of these was having to replace the batteries so frequently.

Whoa...they have a USB-C rechargeable one.

You know, if they sold an audiophile one, with clean electronics, a good built in amp, and the ability to play FLAC files (microSD port), I'd buy one.

Correct. This isn't labeled correctly.

Hold onto that. The cassette mechanisms that are produced now are absolute trash. There's literally no manufacturer on earth who makes a good one anymore.