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Sometime after the pill-bottle set I built a better crystal radio: it had a tunable circuit all in a 2 x 2 inch plastic box. Loopstick coil, small variable capacitor, and a 1N34 germanium diode all bought from Radio Shack. I used the same type of crystal earpiece. I even got fancy and added a nameplate on the front of the box. Unlike my first set, this one was tunable. That was a step up from "one strong station" to "I can pick from many stations on the dial."
The pill bottle had a choke and a 1N87 and no cap, so KSL owned it. The loopstick plus variable Capacitor made a tuned circuit. The 1N34 is the catalog cousin of the 1N87: same job as galena, in glass, from the parts drawer instead of a TV chassis.
Radio Shack started in Boston in 1921. Theodore and Milton Deutschmann named the store after the radio room on a ship and sold gear to ship operators and hams. Tandy Corporation, the Fort Worth leather company, bought the struggling chain in 1963 and turned it into the place a kid could walk into and leave with a diode, a capacitor, and a bag of wire. Realistic brand radios, Science Fair kits, CB, batteries, and the parts drawers along the wall were the mix. In 1977 they sold the TRS-80 and for a while they were "the biggest name in little computers." For this box they were the store that had a 1N34 when you needed one.
This radio worked much better than the bottle. Tuning taught me about resonant circuits controlled using the knob of a capacitor, and the difference between a lump of inductance and a circuit you can move across the band. It was the stepping stone to building more complex circuits and to the ham ticket that came after the first bottle had already put the radio bug in my ear.