Nostalgic dialog: buying & selling used TVs
 

I happened to be thinking about how the dialog has changed so much between buyers & sellers of used TVs, and the wording of newspaper ads for such...

I wasn't around in the 40s & 50s, and I didn't start fooling with TVs until the late 70s. At that time, I'd read the classified ads in the Santa Monica Evening Outlook for nonworking TV sets. A typical ad might be:

TV RCA console, recent pic tube, has UHF. Works good $75

OR:

COLOR TV Zenith 23" console, new style no legs, rect screen, needs $40 repair, $175 obo

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When I'd put a TV in a neighbor's garage sale that I had fixed up, I'd sit there patiently while people coughed out the usual questions:

"Is it color?, Is it SOLID STATE?, Does the UHF work?

Then later into the 80s "Is it stereo?, Is it CABLE-READY?, "It isn't one of those old TUBE SETS, right?"
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Now days, (when you even SEE a used TV in the paper,) it doesn't say anything besides "large screen TV, almost new, $35"... Nothing about UHF or what type of technology. "Almost new" usually means 1993.

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Anyway, maybe others of us who were around before that might have some memories to share?

Charles

I started picking up TV's as a kid somewhere around '89. Most of my findings were 12" and 19" B&W sets. Most were tube type and some were solid state. Back then, I could usually get anywhere from $20 to $40 for the ones I fixed. It wasn't too long before people started expecting a color TV for a B&W price. Usually, the questions were: "Is it color", "Is it cable ready", "Is it remote control." I remember around '94 I advertised a 19" GE B&W TV for sale. One lady called me and she had no idea what "B&W" stood for. Needless to say, she wasn't interested when she found out it wasn't a color TV. I had another guy ask me if he connected his VCR to the 12" B&W TV I had for sale; would it show the picture in color? Now, the first questions I hear are "how old is it?" and "How big is the screen?" You can forget about selling ANY non remote set. It's also hard to get rid of any set smaller than 27". Even the bigger sets don't bring much money. The first color set I ever fixed and sold as a kid was a 19" Zenith Chromacolor II Space Command with the 4 button clicker remote. I got $50 for it from the first person that called about it. Now, I'd have to pay most people $50 to haul it off. Actually, I still would like to find one of those sets. It was well built and had a nice picture. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted...

Back in the early to mid 90's when I was in high school, I used to sell a lot of TVs that I had fixed. I usually got about $25-$35 for a non-remote 19" set. I mostly sold RCA XL-100s and Zenith Chromacolor IIs. I liked the Zeniths because they usually only needed a few adjustments to make them look like new. The RCAs often had bad CRTs, or other weird problems. There was no market for tube sets by that time. The most I ever got for a B/W set was about $5.

VCRs were where the real money was. I could easily get $75 for a 2 head mono VCR with limited cable channel capabilities.

I discovered the used tv market about 1990. I had time to kill and spent a lot of it checking out flea markets, used furniture stores, and the allies behind tv repair shops. I started dragging home sets that needed work and trying to do something with them.

Around that time any used furniture store worth its salt had a pile of sets, usually a combination of bw portables, tube & ss color sets. Solid state consoles w/remote could easliy bring over $200, while non-remote models were in the $125-150 range. A 70s Colortrak 19" was a common find, for about $100. Tube color sets were still saleable, but getting cheap. $35-45 seemed to be the range for such consoles around 90-91. It seems like by the mid-90s consoles really fell out of favor. I never had many to sell, really, because I was so inept! Thelast one I remember selling was an early 80s RCA remote set, very clean, for $125 to friends of mine. That must have been about 93 or so. By the late 90s most of the old guys who had booths at the flea market were gone, and all the used furniture stores had given up the business. I remember talking to people about some sets I was trying to move and when they found out it was a console they lost all interest. Funny how quick they fell out of favor. They sort of became "trailer trash" sets.

I do recall, as Charles mentioned, sets in the paper needing repairs but still priced plenty high. And they used to sell. Near here there is a freight salvage store and I recall, all through the 80s, how he would get in new consoles with busted crts. They always sold in about a week. Not cheap, either.Now, about 2 years ago he had a perfect System 3 console that he tried selling for an employee. It gathered dust for months, finally selling for $15 as I recall.

For the past 2 weeks there has been an ad in the local classifieds for a color console, free. Has an audio problem. I called and left a message the first day it ran, saying if it was really old to give me a call, but I haven't heard back. I did drag home a free CTC-149 recently. I'm going to end up with about $10 worth of parts in it, and will be extremely lucky if I can get my money out of it.

Need a good laugh? A few days ago, I spotted a "gently used like new" 20" RCA TruFlat TV for sale listed in the newspaper classifieds. The price: $150. Um, that might have sold 25 years ago. DREAM ON! There's one for sale at the TV shop that only works through the AV inputs for $30. I don't look for it to sell anytime soon.

I really wish I was around during the '70's when a friend of mine was getting $150+ for 19" rotary tuner tube TV's!

Great thread! My Dad still sells used TVs in his repair shop. You can't get more than 60 bucks for a decent 19" (remote, AV jacks) around here - a far cry from the 70's/80s when you could get about twice that, more if it was a remote set. The thrift stores have driven the price of used sets way down. Here, we have about 11 chartered thrifts (DAV, SA, Purple Heart, Goodwill, Samaritan House, and many others) that get 25 bucks for their sets, no warranty. Chinese/Funai crap mostly - folks upgrading to LCD and Plasma. Most thrifts get flooded in February and March - folks spending their speedy tax return on a new TV, and donate the old one.

Dad had quite a few sets he sold for just the repair costs. He'd hold a set for 30 days, and then send out a certified letter (Commonwealth of VA law) giving the deadbeats 7 days to pick it up, else it was sold. A lot of nice sets went for 35-50 bucks in the 80s, consoles included. Heck I can remember when a 19" B/W set could sell for 45 bucks. Now? Who wants black and white?
Projection sets are hard to sell for much too.

Cheers,

There's still a market for used stuff, you just have to sell what's in style. These days people don't want CRT sets any more than they wanted B/W consoles 20 years ago, or AM radio consoles 20 years before that.

Flat screen sets are selling well now. Just last month I sold a 20" LCD set for $150 in no time. I got it cheaply and it was an easy fix. In contrast, I couldn't give away a 20" RCA with stereo sound and remote even though it had a better picture than the LCD. I had to take it to Goodwill just to get rid of it.

I don't know if anyone even ASKS about TVs at garage sales anymore. In the Los Angeles area, you always see TVs at garage sales, but they're usually cheapie late 90s 20 & 27" sets missing the remote. They sit there all day long, then are still on the lawn in the rain for weeks to come, since they didn't sell. Sad but fact.

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If anyone DID discuss and ask about TVs at garage sales today, my guess is that they would ask "How old is it?". With that being the only real question, I'd imagine that they'd go on to ask "How much will you pay me if I take it?", or "Jeez; why would you even bother to haul that thing out front of the house... Isn't that a regular CRT TV?. Please call 3-1-1 and have the city send the bulky item truck to pick it up on the next trash day, because we don't want to see it there for the next year!"

Charles

In the mid 90's I remember seeing tube color and b+W sets at the thrift stores all the time. I didnt see many chromacolor II's until the late 90's. Thats when most of the tube sets dissapeared from the resale shops then all I started to see were chormacolor II's only.
Those sets were always cheap. However, for me as a kid, $35.00 for a nice 4tube hybrid was expensive. A few lawnmows could pay for it. I remember going to the gingham tree resale shop with my friend and his mom back around 1992 and seeing all of the old sets on the shelf. The Downers Grove resale shop had just as much neat vintage electronics piled up. Almost all of them were tube sets. I'll never forget how neat the resale shops looked, and this really was not all that long ago. Saw lots of 4 tubers back then and I had lots of them.
Those sets didnt really sell though, theyd sit on the shelf until I could save enought to buy them. I was fortunate enough to live just a few blocks away from the resale shops in Downers Grove. Id go almost every day after school. If I found a set and was able to buy it, Id bring it home carrying it by the carry handel and have to put the TV in the grass and switch hands every 20 steps. It was a real effort to bring those 16" zenith hybrid portables home. Never had a handel break on me though. Even to this day!
The gingham tree resale shop was run by older folks in there 70's and 80's and was part of the Good Samaritan hospital. Whenever I brought a set upto the front and it was a Zenith one of the old ladys would tell me "You got a Zenith TV there, those are the best money can buy". I heard that all the time back then.

Sometimes Id hear "I think thats a tube type TV" or "you wont be able to find tubes anymore"
One thing I must say, the term "tube TV" has a whole new meaning with the advent of LCD television..............

Yes... I've had to retrain my ears. I can't let them perk up anymore when I overhear a conversation in which someone exclaims "I have a tube-type color TV that I'm going to dump". Now it means "2003 Samsung 32-inch TV with a picture tube". It used to mean "BIG wooden-cased color TV from Grandpa's guest room that needs the tuner sprayed"

Charles

I went to a yard sale about 10 years ago and found one of those 13" Zenith B+W solid state portables, made by Goldstar circa 1978. The cabinet was white with a black front panel, I think, and two selector knobs. The discussion:

me: does it work?
him: I think so.
me: how much?
him: how about $5?
me: can I turn it on?
him: OK.
[the TV did not power on successfully]
him: if you want it, just take it
his wife: can we give you something for taking it away?

Later that evening I replaced an opened fuse (think it was an in-line glass fuse with the wires tacked on to the end caps) and the TV worked fine but there was a little audio distortion. We used if off and on until my wife donated it to the Salvation Army! Wasn't happy to lose that little guy. My parents had the same model in our kitchen through the 80s.

Like Charles, I'm trying to ignore the words "tube tv". Shows up in the classifieds now.

Got a little surprise Saturday. We went in Goodwill and there were 3 tv sets. One was an RCA console which my wife really liked-because it was identical to one her great grandmother had. (when I met my wife, she had inherited it. I don't recall where it went-might have been the same set) Anyway, that one wasn't too interesting to me as it was just a late 70s varactor tuned RCA. The others got a second look, though. First was a 19" Zenith table model that looked like mid-70s. Imagine my surprise when I saw the date on the back-'82! This had click-stop tuning and the whole bit. $10. I left it there. Then there was a nice 13" Zenith color with a great 70s look-but it was made in 1980. Just too new for me right now. That 13" was only $6. Who knows, I may have to run back and get it. This is a brand-new store 10 minutes from home-might have to check in every so often. Oh, and both of those sets, according to the stickers on the back, were assembled in St. Louis.

I went through another annoying experience today that reminds me that I don't need to waste my time with new TV's. I found a nice looking 2002 27" JVC D series at the TV shop a few months ago. I found some surface mount resistors on the CRT board that were open. Fixed that and the picture still looked very bad due to a weak CRT. About a month ago, I found a suitable CRT and got the set playing real nice. This even has the original remote and many A/V jacks. I advertised it for $100 and this woman comes over and I flip through my channels: 3, 11, 24, 30. And, she says "is that all I can get?" I told her that's all I could get but she could program the set to receive whatever channel she wanted. "Oh, I don't want to do that. Mine you can just flip, flip, flip." She then turned around and walked off before I could explain to her how to do it. What the problem really was is the fact it wasn't a 12/08 LCD flatscreen. I'm just very fed up with idiots! They don't give a hoot about how much $$ or time we have in something!

Cool sets . Today Its more like 'does it do 1080p?" I for one, don't need hdtv. I watch re-runs and movies on cable.

I don't have the least bit of desire to watch older TV in HD. In fact, I don't have any desire to watch current TV in HD. Wait a minute. I don't have the desire to watch new TV at all. It's all crap.

I should have showed that woman (had she hung around) that turned her nose up at the JVC the '77 xl100 with rotary tuners. She wouldn't have to program that set! What will be funny is when she buys a new HD TV from Wal-Mart and discovers that it needs "programming."