Hoffman...yea or nay

[Ampico-kid]

Originally Posted by Tubejunke

To me this is sort of an oddity in the fact that the cabinet does indeed look late fifties to very early sixties, but the viewing area screams late sixties or seventies with what I call a second generation rectangular crt. Nearly all CRTs in the mid and late fifties had the more rounded corners and most often a separate flat safety glass. Take a good look at the insides of this set before you buy it because honestly, to me it looks as if it could possibly be a "retro" retro-fit job. In other words it looks like someone in the seventies with a taste for the popularity of fifties nostalgia at the time might have decided to mount a solid state or hybrid color set up in a vintage cabinet. It would have been the thing to do back in those days rather than try to resurrect the old B&W chassis and tube which was just junk back then. Heck it could have been a young Harry Poster job! Who knows? I hope that I am completely off base and it is simply a set made by a company that was way ahead of its time. It could be exactly like the Edsel!

I think we may have an Edsel here....take a look at this picture of a 1959 Hoffman tv on the left with a model number of B3683 compared to the one I'm looking at on the right with a model number of BR3873. They both appear to have the same rectangular crt and a very similar cabinet and control layout. But you're right that the squareness of the corners on the crt does look out of place for the cabinet style.........Bob