http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=3638&item=3288058965&rd=1
People are asking more and more for these sets now!
It's a few minutes away from me in good old Detroit.
The last one I had was in 1978, It had the tuning meter like this one and a worn out 23EGP22 crt that I replaced with a universal.

here is a pic of it.

Nice looking set, BUT.... In my opinion the seller is asking too much for an opening bid. In his description he states "the cabinet alone is worth 150.00" Well.... it's not. There are alot of nice looking tv's and stereo's in fantastic cabinets that the owners can't give away. Anyway.... just my 2 cents. I hope you can make a deal with the seller and get it!

I know... Some of these sellers are dreamers and feel that they have been insulted if offered any less.
But, If you think about it those sets would never have been saved by normal people.
They would have been out in the trash long ago!
So in a way it is good and bad.
Also, Something I found out long ago when going to estate sales, NEVER show any excitement when looking at something they have that you really want bad! Always point out the flaws and take your time inspecting the item.
A less than honest seller will exploit a newbies enthusiasm and jack up the price or won't budge off of the listed one.
I learned this first when buying cars for a dealer friend at the age of 17. I learned to read a seller real well this way and feel out what they may be willing to part with it for. When I bought a 1967 GTO in 1981 with 38,000 original miles for 2200 dollars the owner thought I wasn't interested and didn't like the car at all!!
Quite the opposite though! It was a mint original that I kept for years and enjoyed every mile in! I saved a lot off the price he had it up for.
I almost never offer the asking price, Usually I will ask if they will take x amount and see if they accept or counter offer.
Heck, For me bargaining is half the fun of getting something!

Originally posted by captainmoody
here is a pic of it.

My friend's mom had a combo unit in that same style. You had to lift up the cover and slide it in to watch the TV.

The phonograph worked well but the TV only gave a green picture. Probably was a bad crt.

NEVER show any excitement when looking at something they have that you really want bad!

No kidding, I got really burned by the seller at the estate sale that both of those space command table sets came from. You all know Ive been waiting to find one of those for litterally 10+ years in a table/portable version. I couldnt hold my excitement in! There was no price on either tv, even though neither of them really worked when I found them. The jerk running the sale says
"$150.00 for both" I said $100.00, and we split the differance. Still way too much for estate sale material but I got what Ive always wanted so I still won in the end. Ive normally been pretty good about not really caring.
The best is when you find a set you really like and it doesnt work, or you do something to it to fool the seller to make them think its defective. Ask them how much then start playing around with it, they will see it doenst work. They always drop the price, then you start to show lack of interest. I always tell them I am a tv service tek. Then they normally say "well, is it worth parts" Thats when you get it for dirt cheap. However sometimes you get one of those morons that thinks the dust inside the tv is causing all the problems, or its because there is no antenna so they still wont budge on the price. Bring it home, readjust the controls you threw off and there you have a nice set for $5.00!! Another one of my favorites is when a set doesnt work at the resale shop (like an IF problem), you bring it to their attention and they say "well, we dont get a good signal in here because of the metal beams in the building". So big deal if you take advantage of the people selling the sets, those people could really care less about an old tv. Its payback for ripping me off in the past! And of course my favorite line from those estate sale people: "what are you going to do with it?"

Captain,
I have had several of these GE's thru the years in 21, 23 and 25 inch rectangular styles and every one had crappy fleshtone reproduction. They all had the red tomatoes and green grass and blue skies but the fleshtones were always too purple or too green with no adjustment that would ever bring them close to pinkish or peach fleshtones. Was this something that was well known with the GE's of this era or did i just stumble across several with the same problem? I know most GE's had that noisy flyback ringing that seemed i was the only one that could hear it but at the time i thought that was normal to their design.
Tony

I never really cared for the picture quality on those old GE sets.
From what I saw, People didn't keep them very long before junking them.
A lot of their products could be seen on the curb in the early to mid seventies. That's how I got my first portacolor in '76, It was a '72 model and had several problems.

Originally posted by captainmoody
I never really cared for the picture quality on those old GE sets.
From what I saw, People didn't keep them very long before junking them.
A lot of their products could be seen on the curb in the early to mid seventies. That's how I got my first portacolor in '76, It was a '72 model and had several problems.

GE always seemed to be the bottom end of everything. Their washers were loud, clunky, wasted LOTS of water but they did last. Their TVs, well. We had quite a few of 'em in school and they weren't that great. They had a funny looking color picture.

I have a '75 GE 19" tube type set and have noticed the color quality is different than, say, an RCA. It is not too bad if you are just watching it by itself but when you compare it you can tell the difference. The chroma system of the GE tube sets is very simple...I don't know exactly how it works but it seems like it does not have an actual 3.58 mhz oscillator, it somehow uses the color burst pulse to sustain the chroma reference oscillator signal.


I do have a GE round color set with good performance but it is actually a CTC-15 design built with GE components. Also the 1950's GE b/w console sets are substantial with good quality.
Sometime in the 60's it seems like GE made the decision to go after the cheap end of the electronics market.

I would tend to agree with you on that one. As I stated in another post, our shop sold GE's for awhile in the early 80's. We had the sets that had VIR. They had a great picture but the damn sets broke on the sales floor. If I remember right, the yokes went out. My Uncle quit selling them after a year, but the high repair rate kept him busy for years. I wonder why GE always put out such a crappy set? GE had allot of money behind them, I'm sure much more than Zenith, and you would have thought they could have designed a good set. It's probably because they had many other products to market and sell and they just didn't care that much....

The GE console we had when I was a kid was just a little newer than this; I've had a few this age pass through my hands, along with enough solid state GE's to fill a house. The tube sets worked but had crappy pictures-only our families old set was any good. That was probably because the serviceman was constantly out to the house keeping it going. The solid state GE that replaced it was reliable as rain but I had people from all around the neighborhood bringing me dead ones when I was a teenager-I was never smart enough to fix one. I remember that my Dad really wanted to buy a new Zenith but the dealer (who sold both) talked him into a GE instead.

must been 25ym with bad flys or ec with all the bad griplet joints.

Originally posted by jstout66
I would tend to agree with you on that one. As I stated in another post, our shop sold GE's for awhile in the early 80's. We had the sets that had VIR. They had a great picture but the damn sets broke on the sales floor. If I remember right, the yokes went out. My Uncle quit selling them after a year, but the high repair rate kept him busy for years. I wonder why GE always put out such a crappy set? GE had allot of money behind them, I'm sure much more than Zenith, and you would have thought they could have designed a good set. It's probably because they had many other products to market and sell and they just didn't care that much....

Well, I emailed the seller yesterday and he got back with me this morning.
I asked him if he would sell it for 75.00 (I felt that was too high, But wanted it anyway.)
His reply was "the cabinet is too nice to sell it for less than 149.00!
I sent another reply thanking him for answering me but I collect television sets not cabinets!
Oh well, It is better anyway as I am out of space and money!

god those people with that mentality ANNOY me :mad: I've got news for that seller...... he's gonna hold on to his "furniture" for a LONG time, as I don't think many people convert tv or stereo cabinets anymore. At one of the thrift stores in my home-town, there has been one of those TALL vertical RCA combo cabinets. I was SO happy when I spotted it until I opened the doors and saw everything had been stripped :uzi: The store had it priced at $150.00. 2 years later it's STILL there, and now is marked down to $50.00 and still NO takers.

I think the seller is an older person and thinks that way.
He emailed me back and said he would check if the tv is removable from the cabinet!
A nice person but they just don't understand.

I think too many of these people are not in the trade of collecting/buying and selling old TV's and have no empirical experience on which to base market value. They are basically pulling a value out of a hat based a lot on what they bought the set new for. The only way that an old TV would have value as a cabinet is if the TV guts were pulled out, shelves installed, inside painted, etc. so someone could use it as a piece of furniture.
Even then, not too many people decorate in the dark mediterranean style anymore, so the cabinet would have limited value.

Market value of old items is based a lot on whether the product appeals to people's tastes and not necessarily the functional value of the item.

I recently saw a 1990's Zenith console set, the type with the bad picture tubes, converted to a cabinet for a 19" portable at a lady's house I went to a call on to pick up a console stereo. They had removed the CRT mask and installed wooden trim to frame the 19" set in the cabinet.

I have to admit that I've never been able to understand the attraction to those really ornate consoles with fake drawers, brass handles, wood railings and fancy speaker grills. If you ask me they're all ugly beyond belief. I'll take a plain table model, or danish modern console any day over one of those. Why make a TV look like a coffin?

I never really thought about it, As I collect from a standpoint of what chassis or if it is a remote or not.
I really do not prefer dark mediterranian or the like but if it comes with the tv oh well!
So many people decorated their houses like that in the late 60's and early seventies.
I remember going on service calls to homes that were still decorated like that in the early eighties. They usually had dark red or brown shag carpeting, Dark wood paneling and at least one swag light.
The console was always a full to the floor and heavy, With shelves above that I would hit my head on! Then the next problem after geting it away from the wall was getting enough light to see what I was doing! Oh, And the carpet was so dark and a thick shag, If you dropped a screw taking off or putting on the back you might as well forget it!
That brought back some memories!!

God Dwight, you brought back a memory..... I remember going with my grandpa on a house-call to deliver a NEW Chromacolor 2 combo unit. (one beautiful set and pricey, as it was remote control as well) Anyway, the house had 70's decor and the people were big-time Catholics. Bolted on the wall behind the tv was a HUGE gruesome life-size crucifix. It must have been like 7 feet tall. I remember my grandpa making a face and looking at me and saying "How the hell can they enjoy their new Zenith while looking at that" I also remember the shag carpet. Not too fun when you pulled out the tv and there was cat poop. ICK!

That dark shag would hide cat or dog poop really well!
I would move the set FAR forward before servicing to avoid that stuff, By then hopefully the owner would see the s*it and be shamed into cleaning it up.