A few good men

[oldtvman]

In my office I keep pictures of working sets, I show them to my clients in hopes that they may have seen on of these beauties in their travels. Similiar to a wanted poster you would find in the Sherriff's office. Unfortunately the response I get is "the deer in the headlights" look. I guess my point is other than people that have a technical background, It would be like me going to a quilting show and trying to get excited.

[ceebee23]

lol ...I know the feeling ..when I rave on about color tv from 1953 people look at me as if I dropped in from another planet and when I talk about the CBS system they get really glazed looks on their faces ....the only exception is a friend form Kansas who saw the famous Rose Bowl parade....and remembers standing with his dad outside a TV shop in downtown KC, freezing, in awe at the color images.

[bgadow]

I've thought about maybe posting a little flyer in my office. Once you get someone on the topic you can get some pretty interesting stories out of folks. I don't recall too many good color tv stories, aside from one local repairman who told of his early trials with a CTC-5. The most recent story I got was from a gentleman who asked me to fix his '41 Airline radio, which he bought new when he was in college. He told me that around that same time he had bought a FADA which he ended up selling later in the 40s for $10. I was able to determine that he had a green FADA bullet!

[kx250rider]

It never hurts to spread the word about what you're looking for. After I had been collecting TVs for a few years, I started having them show up on the front porch!

If you make it known what you want, somebody will know about their mother-in-law's former maid's ex-husband's cousin down in Kansas who had a neighbor that went to New York in 1975 and met a fellow who used to work at a junk store where once a lady called in to ask if their neighbor's son back in Albuquerque whose plumber had an ex-girlfriend that saw an ad in a defunct newspaper for an estate sale in Texas with an old TV set was worth anything.

EEK! Grand daddy of a run-on sentence

Charles

[Charlie]

Originally Posted by Kaye-Halbert TV

It never hurts to spread the word about what you're looking for. After I had been collecting TVs for a few years, I started having them show up on the front porch!

If you make it known what you want, somebody will know about their mother-in-law's former maid's ex-husband's cousin down in Kansas who had a neighbor that went to New York in 1975 and met a fellow who used to work at a junk store where once a lady called in to ask if their neighbor's son back in Albuquerque whose plumber had an ex-girlfriend that saw an ad in a defunct newspaper for an estate sale in Texas with an old TV set was worth anything.

Run-on, but very true sometimes!

Polaraman had a floor model set actually sitting on his front step that someone dropped off while he was gone. I think it might have been a Motorola. I remember the photo... was pretty funny!

[El Predicta]

Another way to benefit in our hobby is to let the local newspaper in on it. They love to do stories about unusual collections. Then your phone will ring off the wall with donations . This actually happened to me in 1992 (and also to a frend/radio collector recently). In my case, a friend told a Dallas Morning New columnist about my collections. A column resulted ( a side benefit was my 15 minutes of fame) and the calling started. Same for my radio collector friend, this time in a suburb, smaller paper. He got so many calls about radios & TV's, he gave me the TV's!

[Charlie]

Yes, the newspaper thing happened to me a couple of years ago... and I remember the phone started ringing EARLY that morning when the story came out... was actually on the front page! I went to investigate many sets. Many of the calls were regarding sets that were younger than I wanted, but there were a few calls for sets worth saving. Unfortunately, many of the sets were way too big to bring home. Several were large early-60's Curtis Mathes B&W entertainment centers, and being that I already have one, making the space for another was impossible.

[bgadow]

There was a little write-up on my collection back in the fall. I probably had a half-dozen calls from it; nothing exciting, but I'm still getting calls months later! It helps that this is a small town & people know where to find me. I have had some later model tv sets dropped off at my door; a fellow at church brought me a junker electrostatic set awhile back. One day last year I came home to find a small Philco Transitone on the step. I have yet to figure out where it came from.

A couple times I have sent letter or postcards out to local tv shops. The first time I did this was around 1992; one response came back in about 1998! He had retired, was cleaning the place out & found my card. That netted a truckload of free parts. Now, last year I sent some letters out but no response. Then Friday night the phone rings. Yep, one of the gentlemen is clearing out. I don't know what to expect.

Here at work word-of-mouth is very important. Going along with the "run-on sentence", I just scheduled repairs on a '70 Lemans; he also has a 96 Impala SS, & heard about me from a guy in an Impala club; that guy had heard about me from another member, who had heard about me from another member, who I had done work for. He heard about me from his father, a customer who had heard about me from a high school buddy, a customer who knew me from another friend, also a customer, who in turn had heard about me because one day while heading to the beach he stopped in to my competition on a whim, looking for someone to repair his 4-4-2 convertible. They referred him to me. All of the above folks live over 100 miles away. One of them trailered a 69 Valiant up from GA for me to work on. Its neat what one connection can lead to.