Somebody at AEI knows nearly nothing about music audio. An iPod doesn’t even have speakers or an amplifier. An appropriate comparison would be the cost of a 1958 component phonograph record player versus an iPod.
Second, everything about that 1958 set up is orders of magnitude better in quality of sound than an iPod. A tube amp today costs thousands, and just the needle on a good phonograph record play could cost more than you’d spend on an iPod. The digital files on iPod’s are samples of the original master tapes that lose way more fidelity than vinyl records usually do.
Look at the Sears item in the catalog. It was a portable phonograph not a high end item. Except for the RCA and Mercury high end recordings of the time, recorded music then and now was considered disposable entertainment.