A friend in the TV repair business told me about a local TV shop that just shut down because of the death of the owner, Henrys TV service in Wheaton, IL. I was told most of the equipment was basically being givin away by his brother. I took a drive out to his shop yesterday to see what was there. I was amazed to see it was basically all vintage 60s tvs and parts. Here is the best part, I found two brand new in carton Dumont and Emerson color consoles! Yes, Mint in box, unopened untill I found them in the basement of his shop. Both sets are 69 models. The dumont works pretty well, but the emerson appears to have no B+ as the heaters light but no pic or sound. They are cheapy sets, all tube chassis. the dumont is a very nicely styled set, but I can tell it probably would not have lasted more than 5 years in good service.
The brother of the shop threw away all the other "old TVs" as he thought they had zero value. He did however keep everything else such as 1000's of NIB tubes, which I have half of so far. After checking the tubes, they are only TV tubes, like compactrons and the sort which is very good! I will be going back to get the last truck load of tubes next week. I was able to grab lots of test equipment such as a B+K 707 tube checker, a 467 crt checker, anaylst, transistor radio analyst, a bunch of transistor testers, scopes zenith modules, tube caddys with parts. The list goes on. He was just happy to give them away than to pay for a dumpster. The equipment was like brand new still. he was one of those techs that kept his equipment in the box when he wasnt using it, so everything stayed nice. I will be selling the emerson TV, once I get it fixed. Its really nice!
This was a nice way to end 2003!

dumont

This is actually a really nice control dial layout. Notice the VHF and UHF dials are actually vertical. The pointer is a green and red slide pointer that light up with the channels. Pretty nice looking.

Works pretty good for not being touched in 35 years

The emerson is a very plain styled set.

here is 1/2 of the tubes I picked up. All new in box. Mainly emerson tubes which is kind of rare.

ever seen the inside of a dumont? Its a US made set by the way. As you can tell, its loaded with tubes, only transistor is in the UHF.

Incredible. I'm at a loss for words. :eek:

What Carmine said. :eek:

Hey Doug!

Let me know if you need any help carrying stuff! Since I'm not a tv guy, I promise not to try to arm wrestle you for anything.

Seriously...give me a pm if want help lugging anything.

Clay

In a word....daaaaaaaaang!

Man, what a find! Drooling over that Emerson!

Congrats. The stuff couldn't have found a better home.

Bob

Wow Doug, I'm always amazed when stuff like that turns up NIB!
What a time capsule.
Think the 2 year CRT warranty is still in effect on the Dumont?
Be sure to fill out the card... :D

It's one thing to find a NIB color set... BUT TWO??? Wow!!!

That's an amazing find you got there! I wonder which company was making DuMont in 1969...it does not appear that Allen B. DuMont laboratories still existed then. DuMont and Emerson seemed to have some correlation as I have tubes with "Dumont/Emerson" on them.

Both tvs are the exact same chassis being made by "Union electric company" of Jersey city, NJ.

And to think this was close to becoming landfill. Emerson was owned at that time by National Union, the old tube company. Seems like a safe bet that DuMont was owned by them too at that time. Read somewhere that Emerson color sets were made by Admiral but not sure of any details. Would be interesting to know just why they saved those sets-that was a lot of money to just leave them sitting there like that. I recall a Packard Bell roundie on ebay a few years ago that was NOS; given the demand for color tv sets in the 60s how could one go unsold?

Again, a great find!

Who knows what happened. This reminds me of the time I was helping someone clean out the storage space for an old computer store. They had about 6 unopened 386 laptops. This was in roughly 2000, so they were a good 8 years old then (8 computer years is like 35 TV years, lol). They went out of business a couple of years later...

Like 386 laptops, all tube color TVs may have been hard to sell after a few years without taking a big loss.

Holy time warp, Batman! :D Neat stuff, especially the display tags and such. I can remember a Zenith that looked a lot like that being delivered to my parents' house right around 1970. I can even remember the TV shop name - Adsen's TV Sales & Service. That was back in the "The Quality Goes In Before the Name Goes On" days. I think there's a pawn shop in Adsen's old location. :(

Amazing find! That virgin Packard Bell roundie, I believe belongs to AK member Steve Hoffman. As of this date it is still a maiden.