'60's 23" Truetone B&W at the flea market
 

One of the local flea markets has this late '60's 23" B&W Truetone console and I think it's a rebadged Admiral. Unfortunately, the cabinet is a little beat up and they want $75 for it. The vendor who owns it said I could have it for $50; but, that's still too much. If he would allow me to test the CRT and if it's good, I might go as much as $25. Otherwise, $0-$10. If this TV sits long enough and if we can keep the "downcyclers" away from it, I'll probably eventually end up with it at a price I can afford. This particular vendor is bad about painting items in order to move them out the door faster and I'm sure his high asking price is geared towards the fishtank and dog bed crowd. I don't want to see that happen to this TV; but, at the same time, I can't justify spending $50-$75 to prevent that from happening.

http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/f...ps2hpg6igi.jpg

Has a very Zenith look to it.

The selector knob is a Zenith clone almost but the small
knobs look Admiral. I dont remember rebadged Zenith till the
late 80's. A sure sign of trouble along with licensing your
name to Chinese to put on crap radios.:thumbsdn:

73 Zeno:smoke:

I was thinking Zenith look too... But no door below the screen.....

.

It has a very dirty look about. It must've came from a smoker's place. The CRT is probably dead. They probably ran it until you couldn't see the picture anymore.

I was looking at a better picture of an identical set that a friend has and his set has "insta vu." That scares me because there is a greater chance that this CRT is dead and given how beat up this set is, I'd say it's had a hard life with lots of hours on it. Like I said before, the only way I'd even think about giving him any major amount of money for it would be for him to let me pull the back and test the CRT.

I'd probably go 45$ on a set like that if the CRT tested good.

You never know with late model B&W sets.. Sometimes they were quickly demoted by a new color set, and sat almost unused in a spare bedroom...and sometimes they were run to death.. Of couse if they have instant on it's more likely to be the latter...I have 2 23" b&w sets that are like new, all original tubes and very bright picture tubes.

I used to have an Admiral that same age, a perfectly decent set but nothing to get excited over. If you have one, and decide to pick it up by yourself and carry it down the hall, don't drop it on your toe! That was 20 years ago and that nail is still screwed-up! Anyway, these are rare sets but I don't know if they'll ever find much love.

Well, it's not looking like I'm going to be able to save this set. He says the lowest he can go is $40. I told him that if he'd let me check the CRT and if the CRT was good, I'd give him $30. He told me real quick that he couldn't do that and either buy it for $40 today or it would be painted the next time I saw it.

I hate not being able to save it; but, I'm also not going to be bullied into buying it. He also made some comment about how he finds me all this stuff; but, I rarely buy any of it. I told him that if he'd get right with the price, I'd buy a lot more than I do.

That's a shame these guys seem to think there is huge profit as he probably got it for a ten spot at an estate sale. Thirty is more than reasonable if the CRT is not crap.

A while back, he had a cheaper tube Philco console stereo that he painter red (very sloppy) and it did not work. He had $75 on it; but, offered it to me for $40 (he seems to like these prices). I told him that had he not ruined it, I would have bought it. The next week, it was gone and he made it a point of telling me that a woman saw it, thought it was simply aborable, and paid him $75 for the purpose of sitting her flatscreen on it. I'm happy for him; but, at the same time, I'm a little resentful because he can take a stereo that he proabably paid no more than $10 for, spray it down with a can of dollar store spray paint, and get $75 for it. I could have taken the same stereo, electronically restored it, cleaned up the cabinet, asked $75-$100, and I'll I'd get is people ignoring it and the ones who acted like they were interested would just bitch about the price.

I can't believe you did not take that deal. It is close to impossible buy decent condition unrestored 40's table sets (which are easier to find) for less than 45-50$. If the CRT is junk there is still probably that much in parts in the set if you have patience selling the parts. I'd at least have offered to split the difference at 35$.

Well, money is not coming out of every hole I have and space is limited; so, I have to pick my battles. Too many times, I've paid substantial amounts for old TV's, only to get burned because the CRT was a dud. I might could have even brought it home, had the cabinet been in better shape. I also know that no one else is going to buy that TV from him, unless he paints it in some tacky color and then someone might buy it to gut and turn into a fishtank. However, I can't imagine anyone paying him what he thinks it's worth.

If the CRT is bad, where are you going to get another one. Most of those larger B/W sets, were scrapped, ages ago.
Toward the end of the large screen B/W era, Admiral used some real odd-ball CRT types. Most were made by National Video and possibly Clinton. Both were not known for longevity. :sigh:

That's what I thought about. If it was a 17" or smaller set, it wouldn't be quite as big of a problem because those are easier to ship. A 23" tube would be costly to ship and finding a good one might be hard to find. I wasn't finding that many later 23" B&W consoles twenty years ago and even back then, the ones I was finding often had weak CRT's.

So, I'll let him keep his set and maybe these vendors will someday get the message that I might buy their stuff, when the price gets right.

I think, the only 23" B&W consoles that really survived, were the Zeniths.
They still had a good following, up to the early to mid-70's, with the older crowd.

My '69 Zenith still has a very strong CRT and I've had it since 2008. Of course, I don't know how much time was put on that set before I got it. It has some replacement tubes in it; so, it must have been used at least a fair amount. I think Zenith's last large screen B&W was from the '81 model year and I have two Sylvania 22" B&W consoles - one from '78 and the other one is from 1980.

Yeah, Admiral. The set looks exactly like one my grandmother bought about 1971 or so. Before she bought it, I thought color TVs had VHF and UHF, and B&W TVs had only VHF - hers "broke the rules".

Sad story - when my grandmother moved in with my aunt and uncle, she gave that set to us. I almost never got to watch what I wanted to watch on the family set (RCA CTC38), and the GE M4/21T2425 upstairs only had a VHF tuner, when most of the shows I wanted to watch were on UHF. About 6 months after we took this set it, the power switch failed to the closed state, suddenly turning itself on. I wanted to install the Christmas tree switch cord on the set to function as an on/off switch, but my mom would not hear of it. She was convinced it was going to set the house on fire, so a 5 year old all-channel 22" TV, with all-channel tuner, went to the curb.

It probably had an instant-on diode across the switch. If it picks up a spike from lightning in the area or a heavy surge, it shorts, mysteriously turning on the set.
Back in the day, someone probably picked it up and repaired it.

I failed to mention, that from May,1964, all TV sets built for sale in the US had to equipped with UHF/VHF tuners. No matter if the set was the lowest priced B/W portable or the highest priced color set. It didn't matter if there was a UHF channel in the area or not.
The FCC wouldn't issue any more VHF licenses. :sigh:

Yeah, I didn't know about the all-channel act when I was little, I only knew that every color set I had seen had UHF, and that every B&W set I had seen (to that point) did not.

Forgive this nitpick: The all-channel act did not forbid new VHF stations. VHF remained the preferred band where channels were still available (which, in major markets, were already taken), so new stations increasingly were UHF, but new VHF stations continued to pop up, even into this millennium (KCWX, for example).

On all of the instant-on stuff I ever seen (maybe there were exceptions), the switch was double-pole; the second section disabled the B+ when 'off'.

I think most of the color sets had the double pole switching, but the later B/W sets only used a single pole switch, with a diode across it.
The Magnavox color sets, really had some wild switching arrangements, especially on their transformer powered, tube color sets. Switch and volume control was complicated and expensive to replace. :thumbsdn:

I forgot to mention that someone bought this set and according to the owner, he got his price for it. I'm sure the chassis and CRT were quickly removed and the cabinet now probably holds a fishtank. I wish I could have saved it; but, like I said above, I'm not rolling in money and I don't have a lot of space left; so, I have to be very picky about what I bring home.

That tv is definitely a admiral my parents had a set that was exactly like this set it said admiral it lasted me until the 90s...Timothy

-ig This thread goes back, quite a while!
From what I saw of the picture, the thing was rather beat up and grungy. It's interesting to see what was going on with the last of the tube or hybrid B/W sets, but it wasn't worth the asking price. Naturally, the seller would tell you that he got his asking price, in case he got in another set, that you might be interested in. :sigh:

When they say things like "I got my price for it" or "I can't let it go that cheap because I've got too much in it", I take it with a grain of salt. I also know that these guys don't "pay too much" for anything. What they usually do is beat people out of the stuff for pennies on the dollar and then they act like they've got a ton of money in the stuff.

I had one of those sets. Made by Admiral, about a 1969 model or thereabouts.