I said no more consoles due to space concerns (small house and large family) but went back on my word again!
I was headed to the doctor this morning and saw these two sets in the trash about 8 blocks from my house. Of course it had to be raining like all heck as well...
Got both of them home and dried off. The Zenith looks fine still, the RCA will need the top refinished. Still have to move them to the basement and out of the kitchen and front room as well! My back hurts as I think of this...
Somehow I just can't leave sets like this if they are awaiting the garbage truck, maybe I need some sort of blinders so I can only look forward and not side to side when driving through the neighborhood on garbage day!
They have no value today except to myself and a few people here, I really can't explain why I cannot say no. Maybe it's the fact I used to repair and sell the things in droves and really enjoyed the tv business back then..

I know where you are coming from. I'll never have the room to properly display all the sets I have, and nobody will take the excess I am giving away...but if I spotted these on the curb you can bet they'd be mine! They are just too nice.

I think this is some sort of mental disorder???

Do not feel as though you are doing something wrong. What is WRONG is the disposable society that has ALLOWED black plastic crap to proliferate.

Then again, it is kinda nice to pick up electronics cheaply.....

So, uh, forget I said anything. Enjoy your hobby, and critics be damned.

I think we all have this problem, well at least I do, just in 2006 I've brought home 3 console sets. One of which is that huge CTC-15 thats about 7' long with the record and the stereo. And I said definitively no more consoles after I brought those other three back from Michigan in December. Well a couple of weeks ago I managed to resist a really nice system 3 console on the curb (but then if it was a tube set, or even a chromacolor I probably would be looking at it right now). I quit looking at craigslist, so I wouldn't pick up anymore consoles, if I don't see them I don't feel like I have to save them, but there is a really good thrift right inbetween the 2 electronic parts stores I go to, and I still pick up the consoles there. Two weeks ago they had this rectangular color Magnavox all tube set sitting out in the rain, I couldn't just leave it there!

I'm like that myself; can't pass up any old radio or TV I see on the curb--I have to at least look at it. Years ago I collected old TVs I saw on treelawns in the neighborhood where I lived at the time. Today, I collect small radios (I have six antique/vintage Zeniths in my apartment now, not to mention many vintage transistor radios of various makes). I saw two vintage stereo consoles last summer in front of a house just a few doors down from my apartment; I looked at them, but that's all. I also saw, several years ago, an RCA 12" portable TV just up the street from here. I could have picked it up but didn't. Then there was the time, about two years ago (here we go again...) when I saw a 1978-vintage RCA color console TV, again just a short distance from my apartment.

Knowing I don't have the room for big TV or stereo consoles anymore is the only thing keeping me from trying to get these things home. If I still lived in a house with a basement, believe me, I would have tried (the basement of my former home was fully half full of old TVs, radios and a couple phonographs at one time).

As the title of my post says, you can't have just one antique/vintage radio or TV if you are the collector type. One leads to another, then another, then yet another... and so it goes. However, I look at it this way. Those of us who are "into" collecting vintage and/or antique electronics of any sort (as all of us are here at AK) are keeping these great old sets from being abandoned on curbs and treelawns, eventually to face a certain death in a landfill. Many of these old sets are restorable; it may take some doing, but it is possible to restore most old TVs and radios to past glory. Most people who own these old sets do not have the technical knowledge or background to keep these sets going, and, let's face it, some folks just put old sets out on the curb (or up for auction on ebay or Craigslist) simply because they don't have the room for them anymore, or because they just remodeled their living room or den and the set's cabinet doesn't match the new decor.

Sad. Very sad indeed. However, as I have said here before, every old TV or radio, etc. we AKers can restore to its former glory is one more set we have saved from the landfill. For sets made by now-defunct companies such as Zenith, this is very important, IMO, because they are a part of history and represent a level of engineering and sound/video quality we will never see again, in this age of just about everything being made by some no-name offshore company. This is why I am glad I became interested in Zenith entertainment equipment when I did, although when I brought home my first Zenith TV, a 23" console manufactured in 1963 (I got the set six years later from a curb just one street away from my home at the time), I had no idea I was going to like Zenith equipment as well as I do today. But I did and still do to this day; I feel it's just my small way of keeping the spirit of what once was the mighty Zenith Radio Corporation of Chicago alive, even if the company itself is long gone, never to return.

Who knows where the radios and TVs in our collections might have wound up were it not for collectors like ourselves? :dunno: :scratch2:

I said no more consoles due to space concerns (small house and large family) but went back on my word again!
I was headed to the doctor this morning and saw these two sets in the trash about 8 blocks from my house. Of course it had to be raining like all heck as well...
Got both of them home and dried off. The Zenith looks fine still, the RCA will need the top refinished. Still have to move them to the basement and out of the kitchen and front room as well! My back hurts as I think of this...
Somehow I just can't leave sets like this if they are awaiting the garbage truck, maybe I need some sort of blinders so I can only look forward and not side to side when driving through the neighborhood on garbage day!
They have no value today except to myself and a few people here, I really can't explain why I cannot say no. Maybe it's the fact I used to repair and sell the things in droves and really enjoyed the tv business back then..

What the heck happened to the cabinet of your new (old) RCA? I notice the finish is all messed up (you're right; that set will have to be refinished, and probably not just on top). However, the Zenith's cabinet looks like new. What was the difference? I would think that if both sets got rained on (who knows how long they had been sitting there?) the day you picked them up, they both would have had severe finish damage. Maybe Zenith used a better grade of wood in its console TV cabinets (pre-1990 era) than RCA? :dunno: The cabinets of today's Zenith consoles (before they quit making them) would have been utterly destroyed by that much rain, as by 1990 Zenith was putting their color sets in pressed-wood cabinets with faux wood grain (not unlike the technique Zenith used with its Depression-era radios; it was called "photo finish" and entailed gluing what amounted to large photographs of wood onto the cabinets). A good rain would likely destroy such a "finish" in almost no time flat.

Good Captain,

You are not alone... Just last night, I ran out for a gallon of milk, and drove side-streets the whole way to the grocery store and back. (Because it was trash night.) If I had been going to Kroger instead of Village Market, I probably would have seen those sets and grabbed them.

What's worse is actually paying money at estate sales, for sets you aren't even "that" into just because you hardly see anything cool at estates anymore, and you "hope" somebody on Audiokarma might want them!

I have the same problem with cars, as you know. :D

BTW, I really like that Zenith! I would be very tempted to put a SS Chromacolor2 chassis in there, since it seems I can't find a proper Danish-Modern Chromacolor2. (Like I need that either!)

If you get too overwhelmed, I could maybe free up some space in my rental's basement... Better than outdoors!

That would have been better if you would have seen them last night. The cabinets were like sponges, they soaked up so much water! They were on Frazho just before Harper. What saved the Zenith was that there were boxes of books on top of it, the poor RCA was completely exposed to hours of constant rain this morning.

Frazho before Harper!!! That's regular neighborhood, not a main road... You had no excuse being there :nono: :D

That is one of my boyhood trash picking routes... 20-years ago, I made similar finds, but with a bike and a wagon! Were they both at the same house?

Ironic... A TV saved by books.

PS: I'm holding on to that 27" Magnavox for you. Be sure you read the sad story I posted in the Old Color section.. That house was on Louise, east of Jefferson.

Will do. Carmine, keep an eye on that house! It has a dumpster in front of it and I have a feeling there are more sets. Why? I forgot to mention that the RCA had a note on it saying they had more old tv's if anyone was interested!!

I have my barn plus the storage shed filled with TV's plus pianos and organs. When I see something I usually always get it. I really need to start organizing better. I know I have enough stuff to keep me busy for many many years of repairs!

The tube type sets are getting rarer and rarer. I have already observed this with Texas Recycles day where I have collected TV's for 3 years. I think I may have got 2 tube type TV's plus a National SW tube radio this year out of about 2 truckloads of stuff I collected. Mostly the oldest sets tend to be the early solid states.

So that's why the van's up for sale! Don't think I didn't see it ;)

You are right on that one Chad, tube sets are getting very hard to find here as well. Looks like I need to find a way to store them properly, so that I can later restore them when the kids are grown up and I have nothing to do!

Doh! I got into too much with that one Tim! You were right, it's too small for the kids and us to go camping in and NOTHING works!
It will have to go so I can buy a car for my oldest son. A camper can wait until next year.