Very rare early Sony Plasma; Should I rescue?
 

A friend of mine has a supposedly rare Sony plasma set... An early model PDM-5510 with the separate receiver box. Cool looking case; whole front of TV is a slab of thick glass, and is clear around the edges. It's in very nice shape, but has a few things wrong with it. He has the paperwork, and it cost $16,000.00 in 2001. And Sony, I guess, only made plasma sets for a short time.

It weighs tons, and I really don't want it, but do any of my fellow TV collectors think it's something that should be saved? Is there any such thing as a future plasma collectable TV? I'd have to buy it (not a freebie), because he's going to keep all the boards out of it if he sends it for scrap.

Charles

Interesting, I would love to the build date. Yes Sony made plasmas for only a short time before pioneering the big LCD market. Although I believe it was either Hitachi or Pioneer that produced the first consumer plasma in 1995.
Would be cool as a piece of nostalgia im sure but the early plasmas lack the black level and high contrasts that the newer plasmas have. If it's dead I can guarantee that the ysus, buffers or power supply are dead.

Let it go to the dump, Sony should have stuck with the Trinitron.

$16k, yikes! Some depreciation!

My thought is, if it were free (or almost free) it might be worth saving if you have the space, but I'm not sure if would make a worthy investment for the future. I don't doubt that they will be collectible someday but that looks a long way off right now.

...

AMEN, Brother !!! Never WILL forgive them for dumping it...

If it dosen't cost much, save it.
It will be funny to show the friends that you payed 160 bucks for a tv set that costed 16,000 bucks.
Off-topic: talking about depreciation: I bought in 2005? for my collection of old mobile (celular) telephones and 1996? "Benefon" Delta N.M.T. 450 phone. I payed for it about 5 bucks ... in the '90's it was salled in Romania for about 1.200 dollars! (or if we compared the prices and the sallaryes in Romania of 1996 with the ones from 2005 I think the equyvalent price in 2005 would have been around 4.500 dollars!)

If you could get it for a couple hundred bucks I'd get it, if it still works it'll still make a good spare room set, the look of it alone is awesome!

Is this considered an XBR model? Being a Sony it probably still has a better picture than some of the new cheapo sets out there, and at 16k it was probably built like a tank, first generation stuff usually lasts forever.

Someone on Audiogon was apparently selling one, I borrowed a picture of it.

Document heavily. Take pictures inside and out for history. We need to see what it is like inside.

Cheers, Wizard

You want to see the innards of plasmas. I have a 1999 model pioneer 50" that has a bad panel. I'll take some and post.

If it is repairable, and the price were right I think I would grab the set.
I personally do not think any flat panel will ever be collectable in my lifetime, but the "coolness" factor of having a really expensive and early plasma screen makes it appealing to me anyway. Sorta like a KV 3000r, neat as hell to have one - even though there are better sets out there. And...Eric is correct...it probably produces a better picture than most of the current crop of wall hanger sets.

It has a problem with the display; two black vertical lines as if drawn with a Sharpie pen vertically from the top to the middle. Not feasibly fixable, unfortunately. The new display is $7500, and no longer available. So it works, but it doesn't....

Eric's pic is the one! It's a thick (3/4") hunk of clear tempered glass, with the TV mounted behind it. I'll go get it next week, if I can.

Just to be clear; it has been "spoken for" by a fellow collector.

Charles

Yep. Vertical black or thin colored lines spell death for a flat panel. Those damn ribbon cable mounted drive ics.:thumbsdn:

You never know with early plasma panel this might have replaceable parts for column drivers?!

Please do document with plenty of pictures.

Cheers, Wizard

That has a B&O sort of vibe to it....and I ain't talking about the railroad either!