Ladies and gentlemen, may I humbly introduce....

[Kamakiri]

CT100 number 2!

She's gonna need a LOT of work, but it's waited this long for me to come and pick it out of a pile of garbage. Wasn't exactly a garbage find, but I'll tell you the story later.

[Kamakiri]

The chassis is complete minus one tube

[Rob]

Tim,

Congratulations! Are you going to use this chassis to save time getting your other set operational? I know you were missing a few critical parts like a flyback (?).

This reminds me of the line in "Back To The Future". "Nobody has TWO TV sets! "

Nobody has TWO CT-100's!

Are they rare?

[Rob]

Quite rare. The CT100 was RCA's very first color TV manufactured for sale to the public in early 1954. 5000 units were optimistically produced by the factory with high expectations. Few sold and many were destroyed. Only about 100 of these technological wonders are known to survive today, and interest in them from early TV collectors is very high.

[Eric H]

Tim ,

according to the TV collectors rules and regulations you are only allowed one of these sets.
You are required to pass any surplus sets along to another collector, preferably one on the opposite Coast from you

[Kamakiri]

To be totally honest, I dunno what to do with it just yet, but all I know is that I wasn't about to leave it where it was.

Back in about November, our good member jshorva65 passed along some info about a CT100 that he found out about in the Ashtabula Ohio area. I called the owner, and he said that it wasn't exactly for sale at the moment, that he had just entered into a conversation with him about it, and that if he did decide to sell it, which he thought he would, he'd call me.

Called him once again maybe April, and left an answering machine message with my contact info.

Out of the clear blue I get a phone call from the man on Wednesday this week, asking me if I'd like to buy it as it took him about two weeks to get at it in his garage where it was stored. I agreed to meet up with him this morning early as I didn't want this to pass by! Left bright and early this morning before dawn on the ~3-4 hour drive.

When I got there, the set was sitting in his driveway. It had just rained and the set was a little wet, uncovered. I'm going to describe what I saw as best I can. Take a 10 wheel tandem dump truck full of televisions dating from 1983-1995, and dump them in a driveway. Then proceed to stack the unbroken ones outside in the weather, inside in the sunporch, and fill the 2 car garage so you can't open the doors. Oh yeah, and put the busted parts in piles in the yard and driveway. I was stepping over wet broken VCRs to enter his house. There was a huge pile of picture tubes and projection set parts in the corner by the back door.

Plus, he's got more in a storage unit.

He told me about his basement packed with 1940s and 1950s black and white, but it wasn't accessible at the moment He did show me the back of a CTC5 that he'd think about selling, and told me that he has 2 CTC7s in his storage place. He's going to keep my number and call me when he digs them out if he decides to sell them. At the rate he has to go through them, it will be around the same time I pay off my house!

Wherever this CT's been, it's led a hard life. I just couldn't let it sit there any more. Paid a pretty high price for it considering condition, but ya do what ya have to do.

[Eric H]

Interesting story, you just never know where they will be hiding or how many more are out there.

I guess most of us will want to know if this suffers from "White Getter" syndrome.

Sure would like to get into his Basement

There is a local here with at least two CT-100's, whole house full of other goodies too

P.S. if you are going to keep posting stuff like this then we are going to need a "Drooling Smiley" icon.

[Steve D.]

Good score Tim. Nice of the seller to remove the set from the protection of his garage to the rainey outdoors for convienient pickup. When you get a chance send the serial #'s (cabinet & chassis) to Pete Deksnis for posting on his CT-100 site. Also, Pete will add it to his list, currently up to 85 I believe. pldexnis@worldnet.att.net And if you need the high voltage cage cover contact: Fred Hoffman fred@pakratz.com

[Kamakiri]

Already emailed Pete last night. I also have contact info on another CT100 owner that I know in the Long Island area (he bought a CT last year that was stone mint for $900 at the Rochester AWA meet.....wish I'd have had the money ).

And, of course, the getter is white, but what else can you expect.....

[Kirk]

Nice score!

I just aquired my 1st (and most likely only) CT100.

it is cabinet # 827. Everything is there, but the crt is gassy. The neck glows pink when I apply G2 to the grids on the CRT tester

It is not to the athmosphere,as the crt filiments have been lit for a week now on my B&K 470.

I heard somewhere that if you leave the filiments lit at 3v for 6 months, that some success has been had at actually getting the crt back when it is only slightly gassy.

can anyone confirm this or am I wasting my wife's electricity?



Thanks,
Kirk

[Eric H]

Kirk, just my opinion but I think anything gassy enough to glow pink is probably beyond recovery, especially with a tube that is known for going to air, no doubt yours is getting worse each day and not better.

Usually running the heaters is for tubes that at least display a picture.

Your best bet at this point might be to seal it with some vacuseal to prevent it from going completely to air and perhaps there will be a way to re-evacuate it at some point?

[Kirk]

Hi Eric!

Thanks for the advice...

A question....

Where to I obtain vacuseal and is there a proceedure for applying it?

Thanks,
Kirk

[Eric H]

Kirk, Wiseguy (Terry) has that info.

He's posted it here before but i'm not sure where.

[ChuckA]

Kirk,

Here's a link to the stuff:

http://www.2spi.com/catalog/vac/vacleak.shtml


Chuck