Another suburban chicago TV shop is history.......

[drh4683]

Hallmark TV service which has been in business in North Riverside, IL since 1954 and closed down last week. I got word from a co worker who lives in north riverside last week that they just got a dumpster in front of the store.

Ive only been to this place about 2 times. He claimed he had no parts for older sets so I stopped going in. Apparently that was a lie as the dumpster was being filled with tube caddys and boxes of NOS tubes and zenith parts (dura-modules, IF and AFC sub chassis, etc). Also got a tuner subber as well as an b+K 1077 analyst, a couple working simpson 260's amoung other good quality good condition test equipment. Trays full of organized 1/2 watt resistors, many good new electronic components. Hallmark was a zenith dealer and had many zenith signs throughout the interior. I asked the owner (scott) if he was going to keep any of it. Some yes some no. Pretty much anything that had the hallmark name on it was going to be saved which was understandable. That left the "non dealer" named zenith signs up for grabs. One of the most unique of all items were the curtians in the front window of the store (this building was 1950's two flat with the TV shop first floor, large front windows on front and corners).
I was fortunate to get the curtians which turned out to be about 13 feet in length, 7'6" in height. The curtians are made of what appears to be nylon and are pretty nice "quality" in themselves. I was able to get the the original 3/8 brass curtian rod with associated hardware as well. I would assume the original purpose of these curtians was a backdrop on a wall for console TV display as the they are only one sided. The owner, scott who was in his early 50's claimed the curtians were new in 1968 or 69. That seems about right from what I can tell. Zenith was using the "quality" line all over their 1969-70 brochures. The front of the store had the large "zenith chromacolor" sigh from around the same year. Im waiting on a call from the new owners if they are going to keep this sign or not.

Other signs were the plastic chrome zenith sign on the right of the curtians. BTW, in the pics, the curtians are now in my basement as a display item. On the left is the seq banner. There is not much left there as of now.

Im glad I was able to save some history here as it would have ended up in the dumpster with everything else. Only old set was a 1950's sentinel which was destroyed from other newer consoles being thrown on it. Many 1980's service manuals for RCA, emerson and panasonic. Many many VCR's and parts. Id say about 50% of the items being junked were VCR related.

Its sad. These places keep going under. Pretty soon shops like these will be all gone........Hopefully collectors like us can be around to pick up some of the peices so to speak.