Or less security...
I have no clue what you are talking about ... could you share some of your exklusive Collector's Club knowledge with us ordinary guys ..?
LE
Well it is only a matter of weight really.
You have had quality recorders since the 60s, but they were reel-to-reel (tapes not in a compact cassette) and a recorder could weight 10kg ! Then you had (trans)portable cassette recorders, 5kg, then real portable ones , less than 2kg (I believe the Sony tc-d5 in 1978 was the first), and then the Walkman series (like Sony wm-d6, almost pocketable in 1982). Then in 1988 came DAT, but that was really heavy and expensive, until the Sony tcd-d3 DAT Walkman in 1990. Then came DCC (a digital cassette, huge technical failure...advertised by Dire Straits on the OES tour), and minidic (less of a failure), both in 1992, until the pure digital recorders in use today.
But analog cassette does not mean bad... In fact some old quality analog recordings, properly transferred from a master cassette, can sound better than recent ones !