In the late '60s, I found a 1963-vintage Zenith 23" b&w console up the street from my home at that time. Someone had filched the tubes, all but the CRT and 1J3 HV rectifier, so I had a job finding new ones (finally found them all at a Radio Shack in the next town east of me). It was worth the effort, though, as the TV worked, showing that great Zenith picture on all three Cleveland network stations, as soon as I flipped the switch after installing the last tube. I had the set for about three years (it worked very well all that time), but had to get rid of it
in 1972 when I moved. Hated to do it, especially after all the work I put into getting it working again (I had even patched an FM tuner into the audio stages to take advantage of the set's fantastic sound channel--6BN6 gated beam detector and 6BQ5 output, with a 6x9 oval speaker), but...oh well.
Another trash-day find, this time in the mid-'70s, was a 1969 Zenith SC300 portable, minus the remote hand unit. This one worked as soon as I got it home, and worked very well after that for about the next year or so. However, the set developed an AGC problem which caused a very washed-out picture on all three local stations, which I think was caused by a gassy horizontal output tube (throwing the AGC circuit into full overdrive, which in turn overbiased the grids of every tube in the signal channel from the tuner going forward to the video amp). Couldn't find a new HO tube, so I put the set in my basement and bought a new Zenith 12" solid-state b&w portable the next day. The Zenith went to the trash (from whence it came) shortly thereafter. Never got the remote circuitry to work, though. Could not find the proper remote hand unit; besides, I think the power tuning mechanism was either stripped or had been removed, as I could turn the channel selector by hand with no resistance--moreover, the manual channel selector shaft was missing, although there was a hole in the back cover where it should have been. Even more of a mystery was the lack of any kind of manual channel selector button or bar anywhere on the front panel; this is what makes me think the mechanical tuner drive mechanism had been removed, as there was no motor or gear drive anywhere to be seen on the back of the tuner either.
I found many old sets on curbs in the late '60s and very early '70s as well, none of which I have anymore. At one point I had one entire half of my basement full of old TVs in various conditions (a number of them wound up as parts sets). All but three of them returned to the trash when I moved (the first time) in 1972, but even those sets wound up being trashed when they developed serious problems, among them a Sears Silvertone (RCA CTC15 chassis) in which the video output tube socket broke out of the video PCB, just three years after I got it working. Oh well. When I returned to my hometown in 1975, I found a small-screen Sears metal-cabinet color set which worked (I don't remember how well, though; that was thirty years ago), but it stayed in the basement all the time I had it (a couple years, IIRC).
Since I've been at my current residence, a small apartment in a small town some 35 miles east of Cleveland, I've seen a couple TVs on curbs (a 1980s-vintage RCA portable just up the street from my apartment and a late-'70s RCA color console just down and across the street from here), but I didn't grab either of them. I suppose I could have grabbed the RCA portable and found room for it somewhere in my place, but that RCA 25-inch console probably would have been out of the question as I had no way of getting it home. Another find would have been two stereo consoles (Morse Electrophonic and, IIRC, RCA, both late '70s) just a few doors down the street, but again I had no way of getting them home, so they stayed just where they were.
Oh well. Perhaps I'll get the bug again and start collecting vintage portable TVs from the curbs and trash piles around here. Hmmm.
No room for consoles, but I could put several small portables in corners of my bedroom and other spots. One set I'm looking for, and have actually seen on ebay on several occasions (but haven't bid on yet), is the 5" Zenith portable TV with AM/FM radio. They show up quite often and in working condition much of the time, so I wouldn't have to be concerned with repairs if I got a good one. This wouldn't take up much room and could be the start (the cornerstone, if you will) of my soon to be (I hope) vintage portable TV collection.