Found an early motorola with the 7" electrostatic deflection CRT. The set appears to be in awsome shape, and the owner claims to have gotten a raster on it.

Is it worth the $275 he's asking for it?
http://sandiego.craigslist.org/ele/101690772.html

Since this set is complete with the antenna, and is in pretty good shape, I think that is a reasonable price. Most of the suitcase sets aren't complete.

I e-mailed the seller. All I can do now is wait. Hopefully I can go see it in action...

I agree with Steve, it's very hard to find these in such clean condition. $275 is a fair price IMHO.

THanks for the advice. Now if the guy would only respond to my calls and e-mail. Perhaps he sold it already...

I got some pictures from the owner today. It does indeed have a raster, but a very crooked one. Also looks as though there is a slight ion burn. Otherwise, it seems to be in stunning condition indicated by the pictures.

Since these have electrostatic deflection,how hard is it to restore the sweep to normal? I've never toyed with a set that uses electrostatic deflection before....

I get to see the set in person this saturday.:D

The raster's crooked because the CRT has rotated, easy enough to fix.
The Ion burn might be a dirt smudge tho I have a 7JP4 with a similar spot.

You can't really tell how good these CRTs are by the brightness of the raster, you really need a picture to see how well it's working.

These sets are usually very easy to make work, change all the caps including a bunch of 6000 volt ones and away you go!

Good to know. I can't wait to see it this weekend. WIll CRT tester with the 90 degree tube socket be able to test the emission on this crt?

If so I'll just take my CRT tester to be sure. Can't complain about a raster though...

The CRT checker won't work on this set.

There's another one of these on ebay now: http://cgi.ebay.com/MOTOROLA-7VT5RA-EARLY-PORTABLE-TV_W0QQitemZ5815292447QQcategoryZ73374QQrdZ1QQcmdZ ViewItem

Not quite as clean and it's in Florida.

Got to see it in person. The pics don't do it justice at all. Everything was in awsome cosmetic condition, including knobs and all the plastic trim. It does power up and gives a raster, but no sound or vid. This was the original owner, who even gave me all the paper work, including an original photofact from 1950. He told me it was their second wedding anniversery present from a relative. Very nice set, but it has dual seleniums that seem to get really hot after only a minute or two, at which time the B+ drops slowly to about 127 volts. I've got part numbers in the sams, but I'm fairly certain they won't translate into modern parts. WHen I get around to replacing them, I'll post for some input on what I sould do.

In the meantime, its worth it just to look at it in my room