HMV Pre-War on eBay
 

BIN $8950.00

http://cgi.ebay.com/British-Pre-war-...QQcmdZViewItem

Nice set, and the price is probably right. However, I somehow don't get as excited about European prewar sets, since they're about as common (at least over there) as late 40s sets are here in the US.

The British had a lot more TV going on before WWII than we had.

Charles

Between the differing broadcast standard and the odd mains voltage, you could'nt really use it even if it were restored. Getting parts like CRTs and line output transformers would be extremely difficult in the US.

Surviving British and American Pre-war television Sets
 

Based on Michael Bennett-Levy’s book “TV is King” pre-war British TVs were made from 1936 to late 1939 (remember Britain started making TV earlier but they also entered WWII earlier). He estimates approximately 20,000 British TVs were made during this period. American pre-war TVs started manufacturing in 1939 and were made until late 1941 (we entered WWII in December 1941). He estimates that approximately 7,000 pre-war American sets were made during that period. Thru Michael’s researched he estimates that 180 British pre-war sets survive today and 120 American pre-war TVs. He goes on to point out that up to 1948 Britain had only 50,000 sets in use making post-war TV up to this date also rare.

Steve McVoys’s Early Television Foundation pre-war Database (http://www.earlytelevision.org/prewar.html) lists a total of 252 surviving American pre-war TVs and 219 surviving British pre-war TVs. Steve's number of 219 British sets is very close to Michael's 180 however the American pre-war surviving set count is much higher than earlier predicted at 120. Based on Steve’s database British pre-war TVs are even rarer the American sets.

Michael Bennett-Levy said in his earlier book the "Introduction of Historic Televisions and Video Recorders": "Suffice it to say that the surviving pre-war [electronic] television sets known and yet to be found are almost certainly rarer than violins made by Antonio Stradivari and I challenge anyone to provide evidence to refute this assertion." ***