I looked at this tv when it was up for grabs at my neighbors estate sale almost 3 months ago, The elderly owner wanted to give it to me as no one had even made an offer on it.
However, Her daughter jumped in and said "hell no mom, It has to be worth at least 30.00!" I thanked them and started to leave,
Could hear the daughter scolding her mom and saying "that guy will just turn around and sell it!
Yeah, Right! Like its the only one in existence! No one picks up or wants that stuff around here but me!
Found it in their trash today, They moved out into their new condo and have sold the house.
Still works good, Thought I would add it to the collection as it has the am-fm radio in it!
Also found a 1968 Dodge am radio with the 30.00 tag still on it!
I remember seeing it in the garage during the sale, That old lady sure had a strange daughter, Guess she thought everything was worth 30 bucks!
Oh well, I waited a while and got them for free....

A number of years ago I came across a late 50's Westinghouse console stereo in a low-rent antique store. The owner put her nose in the air and insisted on, if I recall, about $50. As in your case, I thought to myself, nobody but me is ever gonna want this thing. Some months later I was checking out the dump at the local auction barn, where the unsold stuff goes, & there was the Westinghouse. The auction guys had pretty much destroyed the cabinet in carrying it out there. Was kind of neat, was set up so you could play am from one side & fm the other, an early attempt at stereo. Anyway, in the end, I got it! Showed her! Na-na-na!

Dwight, I love that set!!!!!! Is it the model that used a Chromacolor 2 chassis but used a system 3 inline picture tube? I remember Zenith only did that for a few models when they were phasing out the Chromacolor.

I went to one this week-end, and there were a zillion tv's. I only saw 1 I wanted tho, but I simply have no more space. It was a 23" Philco from the late 60's that had a feature called "electric tuning eye". which was a green tuning bar above the channel selector. I fired it up and it had a great picture. This guy must have collected or was a repairman. He had a huge garage with a work area, and tons of shelves with cable tv run out there! I didn't see any type of test equipment tho. There must have been 10 sets in the garage, and about 20 in the house. I almost got a 1973 RCA 19". It had tubes but I think it may have been a hybrid. It had no color tho and a reddish screen. I remember that set using some odd-ball tubes if I am correct. I think 5GH8A's?? Anyway... just wanted to "share" about that Philco. Is anyone familiar with that model??

Yes, I remember repairing those years ago. Most every philco tube set that came in for repair at my shop was toast, My boss hated those almost as much as the motorola works in a drawer!
Most of the people in that area would run those sets day and night. Reason being, New Baltimore had a lot of auto workers and many of them worked afternoons or midnights.
Kids watched in the afternoon after school, Wife watched in the morning, Husband watched late evening/early morning.
Great way to see how the brands held up! Zenith always won though.
By the way, That chroma II that I have does use the sys 3 tube.

hummmm. If you Ever decide to sell it, let me know!

i remember those zenith halfbreeds.
common to see the tripler short inside the focus section and put 30kv into the socket.so if you can find a new tripler and socket get them as spares.the crt was odd too.like it was casted together with a cover glass.nice thing about the trifocus tube was sharp focus all across the screen.

And those trifocus CRTs seem to go on forever. I think I've seen only one that was starting to look old, but it was still pretty good. Every other one I've seen has looked like new. The same goes for chromacolor CRTs.

I highly recommend looking for any junk 23" chromacolor IIs because the CRTs should work well in any 60's color set. Zenith was making 23" delta gun CRTs into the late 70's and even a 23" in-line CRT, long after everyone else had gone to 25".

If anyone is interested, I have a CRT that I've been saving, but will probably have to get rid of when I move. It was pulled from a late 70's chromacolor II and looked like new.

i am using a zenith 23vce or vcmp22 in an old magnavox combo.
about doubled the brightness over the 25zp22 it had.another good one to look for is 23vbwp22.dont look original but grealy improves performance

Andy, You brought up a bad memory.... LOL! Years ago, I had a 23" Zenith System 3 and the picture tube did go bad. I had the tube replaced but I remember how pricey it was because it was a 23". I have seen some of the tri-focus tubes go bad but NEVER those delta's. And Andy, you are right, put one of those Zenith Chromacolor tubes in an older set and you will see a VAST improvement! My Uncle would use Chromacolor tubes once in awhile for replacements, but they were pricey! He must have gotten a deal on Sylvania "new guns" because we used those most often. They produced a great picture as well. I even remember the last roundie tube we installed. A Sylvania "new gun" AND a flyback in a CTC-16. This was I think in 1984, and I remember my uncle being suprised then that a roundie was available and that the customer was willing to spend the $$$ on that set.

Yes, I'll agree that the Chromacolor tubes are the best. I found a 23" inline System 3 set dumped along the railroad tracks one time, had been outside for a long time. Fixed an intermittent connection in the circuitry and the picture was great! Also got a 4-tube Zenith set from the dumpster last year and it had great color even though the CRT neck was cracked---unfortunately it began to leak and after a year was no good.

Wow, I've never seen a cracked CRT that was still good.

jstout66,

The "electric tuning eye" was just that. It was a feature of Philco's high-end consoles of 1967-68 vintage that assisted in the proper tuning of the color picture. The fine tuning control was adjusted until the two horizontal segments of the tuning-eye tube (located, as you said, directly above the channel selector) just met without overlapping; this was the correct setting for best sound and picture. It took some of the guesswork out of tuning these sets, but there was still the matter of oscillator drift over time which would require the viewer to reset the fine tuning. (Some of GE's better TVs of that period had a variation of the tuning-eye system; the GE sets, however, used a tuning meter, rather than an eye tube, to indicate proper fine-tuning adjustment. When the tuning meter was at its highest reading, the viewer could be reasonably sure his/her set was tuned for the absolute best picture, sound and color.)

AFC circuits and, later on, quartz-synthesized tuners eventually eliminated the fine-tuning knob altogether, but Philco's tuning-eye system, not to mention GE's tuning-meter arrangement, were a step in the right direction. Color TV is very unforgiving of tuning errors; if the fine-tuning adjustment is not set exactly on the center of the channel, you can lose the color, sound or both. There were stories in color TV's early days of set owners who would watch an entire program in black and white (monochrome), unaware of the fact that one simple fine tuning adjustment would change the picture to color--glorious, living color! A TV station in Cincinnati (WLWT, channel 5, NBC), in its early years of color telecasting, would often get calls from its viewers if even a station break was not seen in color (the station claimed to telecast 100 percent of its programming, including station breaks, commercials, etc. in color, in keeping with NBC's own claims of being "the full color network" starting in 1965). These viewers would call the station to find out if a given program was being broadcast in color, thinking that their own TV set was at fault if they were seeing the same program in B&W.

jstout66,

The "electric tuning eye" was just that. It was a feature of Philco's high-end consoles of 1967-68 vintage that assisted in the proper tuning of the color picture. The fine tuning control was adjusted until the two horizontal segments of the tuning-eye tube (located, as you said, directly above the channel selector) just met without overlapping; this was the correct setting for best sound and picture. It took some of the guesswork out of tuning these sets, but there was still the matter of oscillator drift over time which would require the viewer to reset the fine tuning. (Some of GE's better TVs of that period had a variation of the tuning-eye system; the GE sets, however, used a tuning meter, rather than an eye tube, to indicate proper fine-tuning adjustment. When the tuning meter was at its highest reading, the viewer could be reasonably sure his/her set was tuned for the absolute best picture, sound and color.)

AFC circuits and, later on, quartz-synthesized tuners eventually eliminated the fine-tuning knob altogether, but Philco's tuning-eye system, not to mention GE's tuning-meter arrangement, were a step in the right direction. Color TV is very unforgiving of tuning errors; if the fine-tuning adjustment is not set exactly on the center of the channel, you can lose the color, sound or both. There were stories in color TV's early days of set owners who would watch an entire program in black and white (monochrome), unaware of the fact that one simple fine tuning adjustment would change the picture to color--glorious, living color! A TV station in Cincinnati (WLWT, channel 5, NBC), in its early years of color telecasting, would often get calls from its viewers if even a station break was not seen in color (the station claimed to telecast 100 percent of its programming, including station breaks, commercials, etc. in color, in keeping with NBC's own claims of being "the full color network" starting in 1965). These viewers would call the station to find out if a given program was being broadcast in color, thinking that their own TV set was at fault if they were seeing the same program in B&W.