Hitachi 5" Color CK-200

[Sandy G]

Bollixing around in my Radio Room, & I found not one, but 2 of these l'il guys from the early '80s. I must have bought 'em offa You-Know-Where, took one to Terry's forgot I had it & got the other. Prolly didn't pay much more than $25 apiece for 'em. One is from '81, works, & has a beautiful picture..The other is from '82, & sound, but no picture. Both of 'em, I'd apparently NEVER cleaned up. The '81 looked like it had lived a not-easy life...Nothing broken, but FILTHY. And these things are from the "Square-Block" era of design, that had all manner of stepped lines, creases, & "Windsplints" for dust, dirt, crapola to collect in. Spent a good 45 minutes w/a bottle of Windex, some paper towels, & a couple of rags..It's clean, but these were black plastic crap at its worst. They were painted dull silver over black dullish plastic, & every scuff/paint rub shows. And unfortunately, there's no real way to paint it to where it WOULDN'T continue to pretty much still look like Ass. I even took some chrome polish & polished the antennas-they go up & down a LOT easier now. Anyhow, you wonder what kind of people had these things-1981, it was prolly $3-400 at least, that was a pretty good chunk o' change, if I'D had something like that, I woulda taken much better care of it. I was a bit better off than most, but I STILL believed in taking care of things...My backwards Hillbilly raisin', I guess. Anyhow, this one will be put up somewhere it won't be abused, ain't decided what to do w/the other one. Only found one power cord, but it looks to be a fairly std type. But I MIGHT be convinced to part w/it-No pic, one antenna's tips broke off, no cord, maybe pay the shipping & a nice honorarium to AK, & it could find a new home...