Pelé

[Captain Video]

August 18, 1958: the Serva - Ribeiro store in São Paulo, Brazil, awarded Pelé with a 17 inch portable GE TV set as a gift in retribution for Brazil's victory in the 1958 World Cup that was held in Sweden.

Every other player of Brazil's national soccer team received a similar award. The TVs were painted on the green and yellow colors of the Brazilian flag. Pelé's TV, if I am not mistaken, still exists and is in a museum dedicated to him in the city of Santos.

[TV-collector]

Many thanks for sharing!

Regards,
TV-collector

[Telecolor 3007]

I guess for Brazil in those days even a simple tv set was a thing.
R.I.P. Pelé. Big player, quite simple man (trough all his personal life...). Not like a lot of today's football (soccer) players.
Anyway, one thing mentioned is the add that the championship is a good ocassion to see the players?

[Captain Video]

Having a TV in those days was a HUGE sign of personal achievement, I have a few pictures here that I bought in the antiquities market of people proudly posing with their television sets.

In 1960 this country had 70 million inhabitants, and only 600.000 television sets. Lot's of people still were out of reach of electricity, even in regions of cities that were state capitals. For a lot of folks it was still a very hard life.

[Telecolor 3007]

Anyway, per capita, it was more then Romania had in 1960. Per about 18 milion people, we had about 20,000 - 30,000 sets. But in 1964 I think there where at least 150,000.
In 1960, anyway, only about 1/4 of the country had television. But in Western Romania, you could watch forgein tv stations (near border area). In Timişoara area you could recive both Yugoslav and Hungarian stations... going more Norht, only Hungarian. The Yugoslavs subtitled the movies, so even if you are not an Serb ethnic, if you knew a forgein language, you could watch a movie. Romania and former Yougoslavia where the only 2 eastern countries to subtitle movies.
In big cities allmsot all people had electricity by 1960.