Kutztown TV finds
 

Stayed until the very end, trying not to scavenge the empty cabinets and basket-case radios:sigh:, etc. No TVs were left behind but Sams sets were found at trash cans, about 6 bank-boxes worth. Probably doubles of what I have already, like the 8 boxes of Sams that I brought, didn't sell and took back. All going to recycling if no one takes them next year. Boxes are falling apart.

I encourage TV participation at Kutztown as many radio guys are looking to these events to branch out into other treasures. Those collectors coming from NJ and NY are happy to go home with some proijects :banana:, provided they arrived in a suitable vehicle, not a Prius or Mini - OK? :nono:.

I missed Friday this year but plan to bring more BW projects on May 13 of '22. Later on as the crowd thinned, I bought three other early 50s sets for $10 a piece, including a 21" Tolex-covered Zenith with the even-odd tuner numbers. Bargains on TV can be had later in the day, both days!

I was able to convey a '51 Philco twin-chassis mini-console 17" to a local collector, who also took a 1950 Raytheon "Marquis" of the same dimensions. I sold a metal 14" Admiral w/o back or safety "glass" and another metal set, a Sylvania -made using a 17BVP4.

But the Motorola 17T23 came back on the front seat with a cute little blonde BW Magnavox MV55 and that boxy Zenith in the truck. Early 50s Zeniths are rare here for some reason. I took the un-sold but 100% working 67 Fisher console stereo back so it can go on FB marketplace. Obviously I still have not learned these do NOT sell here, even when you did all the work :thumbsdn:

Finally, that sweet 64 Zenith 21" model 6026 (25LC20) is homeward-bound back to another VK-er after not selling for a measly $125 over three days, even with my spare 25MC33 chassis thrown in. Plenty of interest from lots of folks when I tested its OEM (RCA-built 21FB) CRT to demonstrate its viability AND yet nobody interested had room to take it. :stupid:
I ALWAYS found a way to fit stuff in, so we's Pennsyl-tuckian TV types must consider doing two days on the road to get to ETF soon.:scratch2:

Sounds like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory compared to the area I live in. In "the wild" here in the San Francisco bay area, I have never seen a TV older than the 1980s. I'd drive several hours to attend a massive swap meet, if I knew there'd be 1960s color non-solid state TVs there. Kutztown would be 86 hours of non-stop driving for me.

Dave - if you need 25lc20 parts, hit me up, I think i still have a spare chassis

Dave, I'm missing at least a couple bankers boxes worth of Sam's out of an otherwise complete set. I have a text file of what I need attached to a thread I started in IIRC the classifieds section. If you have stuff I need and are willing to dig it out and send some boxes media mail I'd be interested.

Tom, have you looked through these yet? https://milwaukee.craigslist.org/ele...379625774.html


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I wasn't aware of them. Though if they have been cherry picked to be radio only (which the ad implies may be the case) then I'm not interested.

Back to Dave's original message.... Why did Zenith do that even-odd channel number arrangement?

Thanks, I'm sure we will meet soon to swap much more.

I just put those 7 boxes in storage, accessible so I can take pics or list set numbers so I can PM you. I will find a way to get them to you before next May. AFAIK, these are not cherry picked - they were my legacy SAMS library started 40 years ago.

Another VK member (2 hrs from me) has doubles that I need to look at to fill in my only missing numbers between 300-499.
He may hand me all of them too, so that may help.

The Bull-eye tuner is described in the operating manual but no mention of the interesting, non-sequential channel order.

I don't know but here in S.E.-PA., having 3-6-8-10-12 all adjacent to each other could have been a selling point, so you never needed to go "around the horn" to find out if anything is worth watching. Conversely if you lived in a metro area, typically using 2-4-5-7-9-11-13, you were equally accommodated.

Ill get a close up later but here is the set. Pre-1962 Zeniths are nearly impossible to find around here.

The 21FP4A is branded Zenith but with GE code, it tests weak and its cooking right now on the B&K 445.

I swear if some of us here in antique heaven knew where to haul a load, set up and sell everything we bring, it could be a great east-west swap. I would not mind having a Hoffman, Packard Bell or Kaye-Halbert set just for variety sake.

These were $10 each and my inventory is better for having them.

This has been discussed a few times on VK before...
In VHF heavy markets (especially if you lived between 2 of them) adjacent channels wouldn't be assigned in the same city.
So if you lived say on the eastern end of the Wisconsin Illinois border a Zenith tuner would allow you to tune channels 7,9,11 out of Chicago to the south then rotate your roof top antenna and tune the even channels from Milwaukee to the north.

If you only got one market all your channels would be clustered, and if you got 2 markets you'd have 2 clusters so to scan every channel you'd only have to rotate your antenna once per scan.

This is why I think people here are wrong to criticize the high prices on Ebay. Those high prices are caused by vintage TVs not being easily accessible in all locations, and it is the free market incentivizing people to spend the time and effort to cherry pick TVs from flea markets and other places... and make money selling them to people like me, who are not in a part of the world where these TVs are found in the wild. Everyone wins: the seller makes money, the buyer gets a TV they never thought they'd find in real life, and a vintage TV is preserved.

Tom C., I figured that was the reason. About 25 years ago I had a project which required a lot of work researching FCC documents about the "taboo frequencies" (their term). The documents were written around the early fifties or late forties. It's amazing all of the situations they covered. Adjacent channel interference was just one of many cases they covered.

Yep - "taboo channels." You either lived in a 2-4-5-7-9-11-13 market or a 3-6-8-10-12 market. If you wre really lucky, you lived between both. But now that we're in a digital world where the UHF band ends at channel 31 and we've got virtual channels that rarely have any ties to RF channel numbers, I guess a lot of that's gone by the wayside.