Well, it's that time of year again.

The birds are chirping...
The sun is shining (sometimes)...
The snow is melting (finally... maybe)...

...and the local communities are having their all-you-can-toss "Spring Clean-up Days", which briefly flood the curbsides with mystery discarables.

So far, the only "vintage TV" item I've seen is an RCA CTC-53 with a busted/smashed CRT (and it was just a plain-Jane model at that), but this is just the first week of these, so things are just getting started.

I'm just starting this thread as a place-holder for now, but with some luck, I'll have more to report in later days. This might also serve as a reminder to some of you to check and see if your own nearby communites and/or local trash pickup services have similar special "bulk-trash days" if you never thought to do so. It may sound strange, but it can make for a fun hunt. You gotta be quick and observant though... Happy hunting!

I love trash picking too! For me its an addiction because i have doing it since i was a kid. I used to ride my bicycle threw the alleys all the time looking for treasures. Whatever was too big to haul i always borrowed someones coaster wagon since i never had one. I remember some parent in my neighborhood confronted me being disgrunteled with my junk collecting habit like i was suppose to be doing something more appropriate. Looking back at that moment as an adult today at least i was doing something that kept me out of trouble. As a kid i was never into sports, or liked playing with the other kids. I would of rather liked to have a girlfriend like Jenny was to Forrest Gump, but girls back then dispised me. Today with the internet i am now profiting from my treasures, and i am laughing to the bank. Before tax day i need to clear out my remaining garage inventory to make room for the new because the city pickup starts on April 15th. Things i am going to keep an eye out for this year are tube amps, tube chassis televisions, vintage vacuum cleaners, Bissell bagless vacuum cleaners, name brand bicycles, and vintage console stereos. Not the plastic cabinet style console stereos. Im talking about the wooden ones! People are always looking for parts. At the thrift shop i go to it is hard to find a decent working console stereo. Most have turntable issues. Either they are locked up, or are missing needles with wires hanging from the tonearm. The other day i saw a nice Silvertone with an aftermarket turntable that was held in place with a piece of man made plywood. What a waste of a great cabinet!

I used to dig garbage finding tv, radio, garbage electronics. :D Other kids called me "garbage digger". I still do sometimes when I'm around it. About 16 years ago I found a Marantz 2235(I think the model is right) with a 1 bad regulator transistor. Replaced it with a 3 dollar part, voila. I don't have it anymore. :( About 10 years ago I found AKAI GX-4000D reel to reel in a garbage heap with just 1 tension lever broken off. A half year ago, I found QSC RMX-850 in the garbage at my work and my boss snatched it away from me. *JERK* I still look for some goodies to work on. But I don't do it as much anymore.

Heres my list of treasures I've found in the last few years on the mean streets of Brooklyn/Queens...

Fisher 500-c working, with wood case

Onkyo A-5 integrated amp working needed controls cleaned

Lafayette LR-1500 one dead channel

ADS 780s one woofer rotted

Marantz 2250B working with a few bad bulbs

Countless ( probably like 40-50) early 70s-1980s TV sets

Records and lots of them.

I can't wait til electronics recycling day comes in April.

Just found a 36" panasonic TV today. It was made in 1997. The tube is a bit tired, but a flyback adjustment brought the brightness up to par.

I love trash days myself, here are a couple of my finds for 08, first is a Philips MX 3600d DVD surround sound receiver, found with remote and paperwork on the side of the road on trash day. when I got it, it would play for about 10 mins then shut off. turns out that the power spply chip top249y was faulty. I couldn't find only 1 for sale, but a ebayer had 12 for a buck plus 10 shipping. works great now but i need to find 3 more speakers to try out all of the surround sound.
Today I found a Sony KV-13TR20 trinitron in the trash that works fine. Its ironic that in a earlier post on another thread I complained about this model Sony. It's way of doing things, specifically this model of TV that uses a proprietary remote that must be used to add channels to the memory if they have been accidentally deleted.
It has a pretty decent picture, Logan

Just found a 36" panasonic TV today.

We have a Panasonic about that big, for years. It just keeps on going, used every day.
http://www.geocities.com/wa2ise/radios/p-ct36l11e.jpg
I love talking trash! :D

Mine says "CT-36822V" on it

Oh yeah I also found this old TV called a CT 100. Was made in 1954 by RCA. Works fine but I have no use for it, so I guess I'll take it to the scrapper tomorrow...

A couple of weeks ago, I picked up a BPC 19" Sanyo out of someone's garbage around the corner from my home. My mother gave me a hard time about stopping the car because she doesn't do "dumpster diving" in any fashion. She thinks that if someone throws something out; then, that's where it should stay. Anyway, this set was dirty and the front buttons were all broken out. It looked like a dog chewed the plug off the AC cord. I cleaned it up, put a cord on it, programmed a remote to it and it worked with very touchy vertical sweep. A simple resolder of the vertical output IC fixed the problem. The picture is very good on this set. I look to find many perfectly working TV's in the trash this year as some people think they will be worthless after 2/09.

I found a completely functioning Celeron PC computer out of the trash. It had no front bezel, only a 8 gig HDD, and a 12X CD-rom drive, but it all worked.

No I'm not using it. I'm thinking it could be used for the wife's POS HP as spare parts.

Found a Harman Kardon 330B on the sidewalk last week. Works well.
A few years ago I found a Scott LT 110 tube tuner. Needed one bad cap replaced. I also found a Paradigm center channel speaker in clean working
condition that I turned around on Ebay.

Trash finds. Let's see...

Three pairs of Vintage Infinity speakers, the best being RS IIs.

One gorgeous antique piano. Unfortunately I couldn't get the needed help to haul it away before someone else did.

Large wrought-iron sofa, very decorative.

Smaller wrought-iron table with glass top and shelf.

Several antique Chinese stools, pictures in frames, and other decorative objects.

Carved-wood room divider/screen panels inset with patterned, colored glass panels. These were genuine antiques, and had been used in a high-end teahouse. When they closed down, they threw them in a dumpster, from whence I fished them out and paid a guy $25 to cart them back to our home.

Large carved vintage armoire, solid hardwood.

Several professional speakers.

One Roland synthesizer.

Nineteen antique incised lacquer screen panels, several decades old. Again, paid a guy a pittance to help cart them to my home. I later saw very similar ones for sale at about $150-200 per panel.

One professional studio mixer.

One carved and lacquered altar stand from a temple, over 100 years old.

One carved solid blackwood stool with figured marble inset into the seat.

One decorative old chair made from bamboo (similar to wickerwork), very much like one in the home of the famous singer Theresa Teng.

LOTS more stuff that I've either forgotten or passed up on. I pass by the trash collection point nearest our home on an almost daily basis (sometimes several times a day) when coming and going to/from our apartment, so all I have to do is keep my eyes open as I walk past it. It never ceases to amaze me what people in Hong Kong will throw away. Then again, space is very limited and very expensive, and there are no flea markets to speak of. Weirdly, the majority of people here won't usually buy secondhand things at cheaper prices because of superstitious beliefs that bad (ghost/aura/whatever) spirit may be attached to them from the previous owners ... but they WiLL buy them at marked-up prices from antique shops! It's as if things get "cleansed" by being passed through the hands of a middleman. But not all people are this way.

I gave my boss a working 19'' color tv that I found in the trash so his daughter could have a tv in her room.
A week later I was fired and my used to be nice boss who was very pissed told me he would beat the crap out of me if he ever saw me again.
I found out later from an ex co worker that the tv was infested with cockroaches, which managed to spread through out my ex boss's house. He thought I knew the set was infested and told every one I did it on purpose.

I gave my boss a working 19'' color tv that I found in the trash so his daughter could have a tv in her room.
A week later I was fired and my used to be nice boss who was very pissed told me he would beat the crap out of me if he ever saw me again.
I found out later from an ex co worker that the tv was infested with cockroaches, which managed to spread through out my ex boss's house. He thought I knew the set was infested and told every one I did it on purpose.

That's why I almost ALWAYS take the back of a TV off, well that and to blow out dust. The rare occasion when I don't remove the back is if the TV has its power cord still attached and works fine, and I found it in the winter.

I know all about those roach infested TV's. Many times, my nose will tell me that a TV is full of roaches without even pulling off the back. One time, I brought home this beat up old console and pulled the back off in the driveway. Almost any kind of insect you could imagine ran out. You should have seen my Mother stomping bugs and going crazy with a can of Raid.

Good stories, we've all been there I guess.

My friend left a 1981 Sylvania GT Matic on my doorstep once, and I was rather excited to open it up even though it was working okay already. The conduit which connected the UHF and VHF knob tuner boxes to one another was filled with ant eggs. There were ants all over the insides. I quickly dumped that set...

Just found a 36" panasonic TV today. It was made in 1997. The tube is a bit tired, but a flyback adjustment brought the brightness up to par.

Where are you located? I have a 1 yard Panasonic that's dead, good tube I'll bet for sure, that you can have, or fix.

MRX37, don't throw away that CT-100! It's one of the first color televisions and is very rare, in fact it is estimated that only around 20 exist today.

http://home.att.net/~pldexnis/restoretv.html

The panasonic I've already sold.

Karmaman: My bit about finding a CT 100 was a joke. I know they are extremely rare and just about priceless.

It's not as good as finding an old tv, but I just pulled a working dvd player (in good condition cosmetically too) out of the dumpster - sony dvp-s360. I can't believe somebody just tossed this unit, given the condition that it's in. The remote wasn't with it though, I wonder if one of those universal remotes will work. I went to go throw out some empty pizza boxes, came back with a good dvd player, definitely one of the best trades I've made in a while.

After cruising through the neighborhoods of 5 or 6 Spring Clean-up bulk-trash days, I hadn't found much in the way of vintage TVs-- just lots (and lots!) of the usual 80's/90's plastic-cased sets, peppered with the occasional modern console. Until today, my only TV "find" was a 80's-era 20" stereo Zenith Advanced System 3 table model in a wood cabinet (it's got side-firing speakers that are mounted behind hinged doors to reflect the sound; the 27" version of this Zenith seems to be pretty common, but I'd never seen a 20" version before). I picked it up only because it seemed kinda "cute" seeing a "mini" version of an otherwise rather high-end Zenith late 80's table-model. When I first plugged it in, it wouldn't power up-- I thought about tossing it back where it came, but I decided to take a quick look inside to see if it might be something obvious. Sure enough, the AC line fuse was open. Replaced the fuse, and all was good..! It didn't blow the fuse again, so hopefully it was just a fluke event that originally caused it to blow.

However, today turned up something considerably more interesting than that 20" Zenith. It's an RCA CTC-16 "Edgemont" console. First round-tube color set I've seen out on the curb since I started paying attention to the 'bulk-trash' days 4 or 5 years ago. Even had its hangtag and instructions (inside their original plastic bag) dangling from a screw on the back of the cabinet. I haven't powered it up yet, but it looks very clean on the inside. I'm glad I found it before someone came by and trashed/wrecked/scavenged the thing!
[Note: Yes, the legs were with it intact; I just removed them in order to make it easier to transport; the second photo is with the TV on a furniture dolly, which is why you can see wheels under the cabinet.]

In any case, at least that proves that it's still possible to find something like that on trash day..!

It's not electronic related, but I've found one of those portable basketball hoops mounted on a sand filled plastic base, a better rim and backboard for it, and even a decent basketball, all in the span of 3 weeks.

Funny, as I don't play basketball much...

The Zenith still has a little bit of that famous Zenith "class".

The RCA makes it all worthwhile, doesn't it? Great save!

WOW! Amazing score on that RCA! That's a really, really nice looking set!

I haven't found a whole lot, but the season is just beginning. Yesterday was my first old-set find, a 10" Emerson TV/rhono/radio combo. The cabinet is really, really bad, and it was clearly left out in the rain. Speaker cone is gone, along with grillecloth No knobs, all the miniature tubes inside are missing. But, the good news is that the 10BP4 looks to be in good shape (haven't tested it yet though), and the 5U4 is still there. It's definitely just a parts set, but still - it's a find.

-Ian

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