How expenisve was a black and white tv set in late '70's and early '80's

[Telecolor 3007]

So it was hard for a family in 1974-1978 to get a second tv set in the house?

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by Telecolor 3007

So it was hard for a family in 1974-1978 to get a second tv set in the house?

Depends most people by the early 60s had a monochrome set. If in the early 70s a family bought it's first color TV and didn't or couldn't trade in their existing monochrome set then they would keep that older monochrome set as a second TV.

There were probably also cases where a family started with a cheap mid 50s portable someone had before marriage, upgraded to a 21-23" monochrome console a few years later when married and on better financial ground, and a few years later in the late 60s early 70s upgraded to color without ever trading anything in and ended up with 3 working TVs.

Some color sets were cheap IIRC in 1968 a base model portacolor was around 200 and the cheapest roundy (a metal cabinet Philco) was something like 50-100 more than the Portacolor.

Working class folks back then often were craftsmen and tinkerers and in addition to the option of buying second hand TV (trade ins, sets elderly people going in to nursing homes were selling off etc) they also might know enough to take a set from the trash and fix it to use as a second set... Many members here got their first set off the curb and made it work.

[zeno]

We were a Zenith dealer & sold Admiral also in the '70s. A basic 12 inch
Zenith sold for $120. Upgrade models were $10 to $30 more. RCA would
have been the same, only Sony cost more. All others ran from about $80
& up. A 14" Zenith color ( tubes) ran $300 IIRC & when they switched to
13" solid state a little more. A FAR superior set by 10 times IMHO.
Typical family had a 23/25 inch wood console as the main set & maybe
a small B&W or color. If you were well off you had a den set of 19" or 25"
along with a 12-19 inch color bedroom set. The kids got 12" B&W or
some other hand me down set for there rooms. Its pretty amazing how
the prices stayed level during the 70's. Eventually pressure from Japan
& Korea drove prices down. With all solid state sets it was hard to
build a bad set. Even GE, Admiral, Sharp etc came out with good sets
after making mostly junk in the tube days.

enuf fer now
73 Zeno
LFOD !

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by zeno

... Its pretty amazing how
the prices stayed level during the 70's...

The 70's were a time of general inflation, so the steady price of color TVs represented a steady decrease in real cost. As black and white became a commodity, they were the first sets to move production out of the US.

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by zeno

...With all solid state sets it was hard to
build a bad set...

Witness to this was Consumer Reports, going from critical comparison of brand reliability to a general opinion that reliability was good for every maker's solid state models.

[NowhereMan 1966]

Originally Posted by Telecolor 3007

So it was hard for a family in 1974-1978 to get a second tv set in the house?

Not really, but for the most part, most had one color TV and if they had a second or third set(s), most often, black and white. I had a 12 inch RCA in my room and if the color ever needed fixing, it did double duty as a backup set. Some other families might have had 2nd color, most often 17 or 19 inch vs the 23 or 25 they have.

Well, at that time, a small 9 to 12 incher, you could have for $100, sometimes on sale for $75 or $80, Mom got the RCA for me at around $80 ot $88. Bigger sets like 17 or 19 inchers, maybe $120 to $150.