Yard Sale Finds

[bgadow]

My wife had to leave early this morning; I get a call from her shortly thereafter, letting me know of a yard sale about 5 miles from home. "They have a lot of TV sets in front of this old house; looks like they are from the 80s but some might be older" Yeah, I better investigate!

When I get there, nobody is around. Kinda eerie, really. Lots of box lots across the front lawn of this farmstead, which is kinda in the middle of nowhere. And, yep, there are about a dozen TV's.

One catches my eye right away, a 23v console. As I got closer I was thinking "Philco?" but then I realized it was a Zenith-typical late 60s $ervice $aver. This was the only tube-chassis set in the lot. But...nobody home. I was running late for church so would have to come back. In the meantime, I had visions of pulling up just as the last set was being tossed on a burn pile. I needn't have worried because there still wasn't anybody home when I got back. But, as I was leaving the owner showed up. Story: the house, which has been in his family for generations, had been vacant for awhile. His grandfather had let a local TV shop store some sets in there, sets that were now worthless. Now it was time to clean-up/fix-up the house and there you are. All of the sets are free-he made it very clear that I could take them all! Well, I don't have room for any of them but I did save that Zenith. I'm not sure what to do with it. The crt is a Channel Master and extremely weak. All afternoon at 8v didn't do much. The chassis is one of the dirtiest I've seen. Somebody squeezed a lot of life out of this one.

I also brought home one of the few table models he had, a Magnavox 19" from '76. This has the old logo, maybe meaning this is pre-NAP? I tried it just for kicks but it is dead. Not sure what I'll do with this one, either.

What else is there? In rough chronological order: A horizontal chassis Zenith Chromacolor II, heavy surface rust on the chassis & a missing back cover; a GTE Sylvania console with that "black" crt, worn finish on the cabinet, E51 chassis. A GE, 25M I think? I used to see these constantly and they never seemed to work. A NAP Philco from the early 80s with the black crt; a beat-up NAP Philco projection set from the late 80s; a stripped cabinet for a CTC-81; and some later junkers.

I could try and grab something if anybody is in a real need. I don't know how long they will be there. He is only a couple miles from a recycle center where they take electronics at no charge.