Thankfully too far away for me to bid on it or I'd feel compelled to do so.

It looks like a 16" tube.
The early Hoffman's are very well built and native to California.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Antique-1949-Hoffman-Console-TV-Phono-radio-/290541078616?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43a5990858

I have one that is similar to this that has the metal/glass 19AP4 CRT in it-very hard to find at this point. Mine is weak, so the picture is poor even after restoration.

This one looks like it could also have a metal/glass CRT. However the starting bid is very reasonable

I have restored Hoffmans with the MARK V chassis(their highest end chassis in 1953) and they work very well. These have the all glass 21FP4 CRT. One thing that have noticed is that the sound is very good for a tube based TV, with no or very little buzz. I have restored cheaper 17 inch Hoffmans(as well as other sets) that do have quite a bit of buzz on the DTV converter boxes.

The previous poster is correct-the higher end Hoffmans were well built.

One note: I am in Texas, but Hoffman had a plant in the midwest in the 1950s and I think most of my sets came from there.

Interesting, I didn't know they had a plant in TX. I always heard they came from CA.
There are a lot of them floating around out here.

The plant was not in Texas, it was either in St. Louis or Kansas City. I am not sure which.

By the way, Hoffman is still in business in LA as Hoffman Video Systems. They quit making TVs in the middle to late 1960s. I saw an ad for one of their color sets of the later 1960s. It read "Expensive and Darn Well Worth it". I guess the public did not think so!

The only TV maker to have a plant in Texas was Curtis Mathis, well know makers of aircraft carrier size TVs. I restored one of their 1965 B&W sets and it was full of Japanese caps. They went non-US pretty early.