Am I crazy to collect these?
 

Lately I've been picking up a few of these uber cheap "Made In China" 5" TV sets.

Why you might ask, well partly because they're cheap as dirt, partly because I've run out of room for anything larger and partly because they are just cute as a bug, have retro styling and are also real TV sets with CRT's, Flybacks, Yokes, etc...

They are also built on PC boards with mostly discreet components so they are repairable to some extent. (I fixed the grey one with a new cap in the vertical circuit)

The Yellow one came from a Thrift store, the grey one came from my Mom in a box of "stuff" she gave me, the white one cost me .50c on eBay :D I have a blue on on the way too.

I'm thinking in 50 years they could be the Catalin of Televisions, worth literally thousands of dollars and that extra money will come in handy when I'm 97 years old :lmao:

In early 2009 they should be flooding the landfills, thrift shops and eBay when analog goes away.

I also have one! I use it to keep up with the Football games when I travel. It is illegal here to have the set playing while driving in view of the driver. I put it in the back seat so I can listin. Some games are not on the radio. I also tune in the NASCAR races.

polaraman

I see quite a lot of those little 5" sets around here, but they are almost all the one brand/model in an overly rounded case that I find quite ugly.

The fact that they are now so cheap to make has led to them finding their way into other products. I've seen a few little TV/VCD player boomboxes and TV/Karaoke machines (some with built in cameras so you can watch yourself looking stupid). I was going to grab one of the Karaoke machines at the junk auction the other night, but it went for way more than I expected. They aren't exactly rare, so another will come along soon enough.

I do have the chassis/CRT that I scavenged from a dropped boombox. The case was a complete write off, but the CRT survived. It still works, but I have no idea what I'll do with it.

They're cheap & plentiful enuff to Have Some Dirty Fun With at Target practice...

I think I know the one you're talking about, they are all over eBay now for cheap.

I prefer the style in my pic above, they have a more "classic" TV shape.
I have no interest in the ones with flashlights, air compressors, can openers etc... I'd prefer they didn't even have a radio but that's standard on these.

Just devise a bracket to mount it to the roof liner or on the rear window deck behind you so that you can glance at it in the rear view mirror every now and then... :D

I have that white one! It's been very helpful in many situations...despite being "Made in China" ... and yes, they are really cheap as dirt!

Nobody is "crazy" to collect things... No matter what others say. Even 1,100-pound air raid sirens or old Toyota Diesel cars (my other "collections").

If you want a couple more of those, I saw a row of them ontop of the coke machine at my friend's TV shop in West LA. Not sure what the story is, but I bet they'd be free.

Charles
[email protected]

Hey Charles, I'd be interested if they are in a color I need.

I also need an antenna for this blue one I just got, also a working chassis would be good but there are a thousand variations!

This one has a problem, won't tune a thing, it has raster and white noise from the speaker but no sound or video.

I can get video through the video input jack but it has no sync.
(perhaps I need to start another thread on repairing it?)

I think the're gray/black... I'll pay better attention next time I go.

Charles

Hi, I think I have two or three of these in my building. I don't remember what color they are or if they work. I'll find them and they'll be free+postage. I actually fixed a couple of these (both new) for a friend of mine. One had a disconnected CRT socket and the other one had a loose deflection yoke. I have a late '70's Panasonic radio/TV combination with the snap on magnifier that I got for free from my neighbor. All that was wrong with it was a broken connection where the AC adapter plugs in. It's really come in handy when the power goes out!

Bryan

These are neat little sets, and usually have a really sharp raster, for such a cheap set. I had one given to me last year, but I gave it away to someone else. Hope it didn't get chucked, since there seems to be a new following for these. Mine was silver. Had builtin AM/Fm tuner and a 12vdv car cable included with it.

And to think we once said 12" B&W's were not collectible! These will be one day too, I am sure.

I see DOZENS of these in the wholesale places and flea-market street here. I bought one or two that looked particularly like Robot Heads, and to one I added antennae (those funky light-up antenna-like rods they sell for cars) and mounted it on a torso-like case scavenged from some discarded beauty parlor equipment, added rubber-hose arms and mechanical hands from a toy, etc... and made a cute little robot sculpture. (If you hooked it up right with a computer input, you could give it a "talking face", but I never bothered.) :D

A while ago, I started collecting little mini-sized radios made as copies of larger vintage radios. Some of these were made as-is, others were branded and sold as promotional items by Pepsi, some banks, etc... I had seven or eight of them, when I realized that although they made an attractive display with their basic colors and shapes, they didn't really have market value and were one more source of "clutter" in my limited apartment space. I recently got rid of all of them except my favorite three and declared a halt to the idea of "collecting" these, although a part of me would still like to. I do know from the ones I had that while individually people might not think too much of them, a good-sized collection of them in a nice glass display case would make a fairly spectacular conversation piece. Never heard of anyone else collecting these, either, and they are cheap - often fifty cents or a buck! Oh, well... that's what I get for living in one of the most expensive places on Earth (real-estate-wise).

My wife used to have one similar to those in Tourquoise.The ones they sold at Wal-Mart back in the early 90's.I dont know if we still have it or not.Ill let you know if I find it.
Jimmy

I got 1 of these when Wal-Mart 1st had them. Think I paid about US$25. Never got much use until I took it to my office and now it sits on my desk. I listen to the BBC and CBC news as the tv will pick it up on the built-in whip. I could not pass it up as it was so cheap. Also would satisfy the need for a battery operated radio as we needed 1 for the house. I've seen the same model marketed under various names. Don't remember what mine is offhand.

Score
 

Wow, scored a really old one today!
This one is from 1997 :D

It is styled somewhat different than the others and seems to be built slightly better however I can't get it to power up at all so far.


Jimmy, a Turquoise one would be awesome!

Romanians love them because they are cheap :no: Wonder, what is the life duration of the C.R.T. at thing like that?

I don't know, I thought about taking one to work and leaving it on 24/7 and see how long it'll go.

Got the latest one working tonight, it had a cracked foil where the power jack was soldered to the board.

I like the little red pilot light on this one that tells you it's on!

Has anyone thought about building little retro wooden cabinets to fit these little chassis into, to make miniature models of vintage tv's? Maybe you could replace the thumbwheels with real knobs and fix a larger speaker, or even a small tube amplifier circuit similar the ones in AA5 radios? Of course then you would need the power supply for the amplifier... Or better yet, trying to make a homebrew tube chassis to drive one of these little crt/yoke combinations? Now that would be cool. These seem to be the best source of new production b&w CRTS around. Best part is they are dirt cheap

I opened up one of these the other day and it had the name of the company that made the tube, the Jin Cheng Glass Tube company or something like that.

Wonder if Mr Cheng could run off a few hundred 3KP4's or 7JP4's? :scratch2:
There's not a lot to them really.

Or a few 15GP22s....<grin> I think if you waved enuff money in front of them people, they'd figger out a way to make about anything you'd want...

I want one that can decode ATSC digital HDTV off air, and with a 5 by 3 B&W CRT.... :D

How hard would it be to build an all tube chassis around one of those little CRT's? Think... modern production all tube tv.

Convince them there is a market and profit to be made --by placing an order for X thousand of them-- and I'm positive you can get a tube TV manufactured in China today. All the parts (including tubes, although perhaps not the right ones currently) are in production, somewhere. Problem would be convincing enough people to buy them at the price you'd have to charge, to be profitable. 99 percent of the general population, alas, would see them as a silly anacrhonism.


The one way I could see this working would be to have a retro-chic design that people would like enough that they would want to buy them. It couldn't look EXACTLY like an old TV, or the market wouldnt' be big enough. Something very cool looking that would make non-TV-nuts drool a little, might.

Hey, that's a cute idea! I liked that! It would be neat!

Imagine using one of those TVs to build a miniature Philco Predicta!

Things like that could be very interesting as display pieces, and also useful as special effects props - for example, imagine a movie in which there's a scene in which a 1950's TV set explode, a miniature like that could come in handy...people at ILM could easily build something like that.

WOW! That set looks like its made almost entirely of discreet components. Not a single IC to be seen anywhere!

True, but so will a loaf of bread.

Hi! to All,

Remember this little RCA 9" salesman's sampler set ?

Best Regards

JH

Yes, my dad had an RCA with what I believe was that chassis but it was in a blue plastic case.

I see lots of them with that 60's psychedelic pattern but no blue ones.

That was the idea I was thinking of when I salvaged the CRT and chassis from a TV/VCD boombox with a broken case, then I remembered how bad I am at woodwork.

I've thought of grabbing 9 of them and making a mini video wall. These CRTs have no mounting ears, so you could mount them edge to edge. Then drive it all with a PC. This guy uses the RGB lines indivdually to drive 3 B&W CRTs, so 2 dual head video cards could drive 9 CRTs.

One from Canada
 

This just arrived in the mail!
I thought it was red but it's more of a mauve with blue and yellow knobs!

It's really tiny, the CRT is 4.5 inches compared to 5.5 for the others, also there is no place for batteries in this one, it has to have an external power supply, kind of weird for a portable set.

This is a Genexxa brand and it came from Canada.

Beauty eh?

P.s. It works great but that is a Photoshop job on that second pic. :D

I had the same idea, one Brady on each screen with Alice in the center! :scratch2:

That little red one really looks like a toy TV...a small kid could like that. A very small kid, I think, around 2-4 year old...the older ones, around 7, would think a B/W TV is "silly".

Got one in red!
 

I dropped off a big TV combo in Oceanside Friday and while I was there I took some time to check out a few of the Thrifts.

The first one I went to was a place called "Potpourri" on PCH 1, a bit of a "frilly" type store with lots of nice things.
Tucked away in an obscure corner of the shop, almost like they were ashamed of it, I found this little Fire Engine Red set! :D

"Rhapsody"
 

I also picked up this Rhapsody brand off eBay.

This set is 20 years old! It was manufactured in Jan 87.

It has the original box with the owners manual and accessories and would be nearly mint except it's supposed to be Pink, almost as Pink as the Pink on the tuning scale but exposure to UV has caused it to turn a sort of pale Orange color. :sigh: No way to buff it out either without losing the markings so I'll just have to live with it.
It works perfect.

I bought a sony watchman Mini TV yesterday at a thrift shop it works like a charm it was only $1.00 They had several other Plastic Mini TV's as well and a few speakers... They had a single realistic minimus 2 bookshelf speaker the foam had rotten from the woofer there was another one there before but someone snatched it.

I wonder why anyone woul;d buy just one speaker and not get the other? :screwy:

There was a pink "Barbie" brand set at last nights junk auction. The usual 5" B&W set with the same chassis I see in the vast majority of these things, but the case was larger and rounder than usual. Almost like a inbred mutant JVC videosphere. It was so weird looking I almost bid on it, but $8 is more than I'll pay for this type of set. It actually made more than some of the color sets did.

Speaking of Barbie and Pink, I just won this little set.

Exact same set as the Rhapsody above but with a different brand name and without the discoloration, I also picked up one in Black the other day.

These are a lot easier and cheaper to collect than vintage sets.

I wish I could do fine woodwork, I'd like to build a replica of a 50's B&W console using one of the 5.5" sets for the guts.
The tuner is just a potentiometer so it would be possible to make one with functional knobs even.

A regular customer dropped in one of the 5" in TV/CD boomboxes I mentioned earlier for repair today. I took some pics of it in pieces. I'll post another pic when I get it back together, but I've had enough of it tonight. It's quite cramped in side and actually quite difficult to get apart. The unit doesn't use the most common version of this chassis that I see. It's the karaoke version and they replaced the TV tuner with a camera so you can see how stupid you look when your using it. If I'd known this thing was showing up I would have bought a simliar model at last nights auction to make my life easier.

http://65c02.org/images/ak/5inkaraoke.jpg

I removed the CRT for a better look.

http://65c02.org/images/ak/5incrt.jpg

http://65c02.org/images/ak/5incrt2.jpg

There is lots of hot glue and masking tape in this thing.

http://65c02.org/images/ak/5inkaraokechassis.jpg

This chassis is different to the one I usually see in these type of things. Rather than use the 5in TV chassis as is they have designed a different chassis that also hold the power supply and stereo amplifier for the built in speakers. Other versions have the amplifier on the CD player PCB and just use the common TV chassis as is. Those versions use an external plug pack as there is no room in the case for a mains transformer. There are numerous bad electrolytic capacitors, they seem to the most common problem in cheap chinese electronics.

I wonder if very many color Mini tv's were made?
I can understand why someone would collect these thing theyre cute!

I have started collecting Mini radios!

I do have a sony watchman from 1987 i got 2 days ago is a black and white set I have yet to come across the color variation.