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Originally Posted by Kaye-Halbert TV
I am in this same boat. I bought a brand new Corvette in high school, my first house at 19. All with money from picking up broken TVs in the trash and at garage sales, fixing and selling them in the paper and doing repairs on older TVs that the shops thought were too old. I was a kid, so most TV owners wouldn't trust me with a new $1000 Sony 26", but there were a heck of a lot of PortaColors and old round tube TVs in my neighborhood in West Los Angeles that I would get repair jobs on. On used sales, I got $100-$250 for any color console, $200 for most portable colors, and $35-$50 for B&W sets. And I could get them for between nothing and maybe $50 for a nonworking late-model set. On repairs, I usually charged $45 + parts on B&W and $75+ parts on color console, and $100+ parts on Sony and solid state flat. This was from the late 70s to the mid 80s, I call the Golden Days of Used TV.
Charles
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I'm envious of the money you made back then and your technical ability at a young age.You are only a year older than me so you must have got into it much earlier than me.You must be one hell of a tech.In the late 70's I took my record changer apart and couldn't put it back together.Poor thing went to the dump.A few radios I ventured into went there too.One my dad saved but he had to cut a hole in the side of the case so you could stick something in there and tune it.I knocked the dial string off track.No one would let me near a tv.I didn't know enough to fix tvs til the mid 80's after I took electronics in vo-tech in high school and never got really good at it til I worked for a while in a shop,the one I still work for.In the mid 80's I was working at MCDonalds after school and for a few years as I picked up tvs to fix and sell on the side or at Bargain Bill's flea market.I don't think I ever got the prices you did.Maybe $100 -$150 for color consoles or the rare portable 25" that came up back then.Maybe $75-$150 for color portables and $15-$20 for B/W.By the time I started getting enough tvs to get a significant amount out of them I was hooked on vinyl records and spent all my tv money on getting them and building a collection.Maybe a Corvette(late 70's-early 80's price not present day) worth spent there but never a house.And the days of finding good(collectible stuff like original Elvis,Beatles,Stones,Motown,Etc) records for a pittance are gone.Hardly any show up at auction or SA other than common 70's stuff and all the easy listeninng dreck they must have made millions of.So I'm glad I got while the getting was good.But I sure wish I had gotten an older house while they were cheap.Houses are out of my league now for sure.The work money just barely paid the bills.Lived with grandma til 1999 when she passed away.The last vehicle I bought was a 1998 Ranger.Bought it new and plan to drive it until it falls apart and then some.Was sure glad when the payments were over and don't want anymore.The used market seemed to decline gradually enough that I could see the writing on the wall.I thought I could unload more this year than I did to clean out but it seemed like when 2005 hit it was like the bottom suddenly fell out completely.