Doesn't every collector deserve one?

[AUdubon5425]

In the early 50's my great-grandfather bought the first TV in the family - a Muntz tabletop. No pictures or additional information about it, but it must have picked up channel 6 fine with rabbit ears, because there was never an antenna on the house.

Granted, they were easily within ten miles of wherever the transmitter was back then.

[GeorgeJetson]

Yes,it's very common,if we are to believe the growing number of craigslist sellers every 1970's particle board console stereo with 8 track is worth $500 and up,right now on the San bernardino craigslist some guys got an empty RCA victor tv cabinet for $300!

I wonder how many of these sellers end up getting angry that they can't sell their tv,hi-fi,etc and just junk it when they could have sold it for a reasonable price and saved it from the landfill.

Ebays the same way,except they pay for their stupidity because they charge more for a higher insertion fee and then to relist it yet again when it doesn't sell.

[Don Lindsly]

Through 1955, Muntz TVs used a Standard tuner and three IFs, like most sets of the day. They would have worked as well Admirals, Olympic, Hoffman, Packard Bell, Emerson, Bendix and others using the same line up. The 1952/53 sets shown in this thread used power transformers, 5U4s and cascade (6BZ7) tuners as well.

[radiotvnut]

I've only had my hands on one Muntz TV - a '60's rectangular screen color console that actually used an RCA chassis.

I'd like to find one of those "gutless wonder" B&W sets. A friend of mine, who started in TV repair back in the early '70's, said there were some low end motels that still used such sets.

[radiotvnut]

Originally Posted by GeorgeJetson

Yes,it's very common,if we are to believe the growing number of craigslist sellers every 1970's particle board console stereo with 8 track is worth $500 and up,right now on the San bernardino craigslist some guys got an empty RCA victor tv cabinet for $300!

I wonder how many of these sellers end up getting angry that they can't sell their tv,hi-fi,etc and just junk it when they could have sold it for a reasonable price and saved it from the landfill.

Ebays the same way,except they pay for their stupidity because they charge more for a higher insertion fee and then to relist it yet again when it doesn't sell.

Many, I'm sure, get angry and junk the item out of spite. I can't tell you how many times I've heard, "I'll bust it up and throw it out bafore I take that".

Then, there are a few reasonable people, like the guy who runs the local flea market. He's had 3 console stereo's there for around a year. They started out at $75/each. A while back, he wanted me to take them for $35/each. Today, he said he needed the room and I brought them home for $10/each.

[jhalphen]

Hi to all,

i would really like to see some genuine photos (screen shots?) of the Muntz 22 inch Chromatron color TV.

Were some actually sold and delivered to customers or was it again one of Muntz's publicity stunts?

Best Regards

jhalphen
Paris/France

[wa2ise]

Originally Posted by jhalphen

Were some actually sold and delivered to customers or was it again one of Muntz's publicity stunts?

This looks a lot like the lab prototype the guys at RCA Labs threw together to demonstrate the shadow mask color CRT idea. This back around 1953, to show the FCC that it does work, and to forget about that color wheel thing CBS came up with. If Muntz announced his that year as well, he probably was figuring that the lab prototype was going into production at RCA. I don't think anyone made CRTs exactly like this, the required cabinet would be unacceptability large.

[jr_tech]

I remember once seeing a picture of Dr. E.O Lawrence posing next to a very similar CRT in a dingy lab somewhere. One thing thing that caught my attention was his use of ordinary automotive spark plugs as feedthroughs for the switching grille. The CRT pictured here appears to have a similar configuration.
jr
ETF actually shows a "data sheet" for this monster jug:
http://www.earlytelevision.org/chromatron.html
Although the CRT diameter was slightly greater than 22" (22-5/8") the pix size was only 10-7/8" x 14-3/8".

[cbenham]

Originally Posted by 50scraze

At least you got a reply! When I try to explain to people that the market for old TV's is very small and the value is way less then what they're asking...well..I rarely hear from them again!

A friend and fellow eBayer thinks some sellers who post TVs, radios and high end audio equipment with outrageou$ expectation$ for $elling them do it just to
"show off" their neat collection of gear, not to actually sell anything.

Either that or they are hoping for a very inexperienced buyer who believes he's found the deal of the century. [The last one.]

~Hence some of the various $2500.00+ TV-radio-phono consoles with pealing veneer and scratched tops with missing tubes, etc.

Cliff

[KentTeffeteller]

Muntz sets would get a picture with rabbit ears, if you lived say, 10 feet from the transmitter on a good day.

[Findm-Keepm]

Not all Muntz sets were the Mad-man-Manhattan-only specials. I remember seeing some fairly ordinary (full circuitry) Muntz sets in the late 70's - Dad put a Channel Master Lifetime Warranty CRT in one and sold it. There was a TAB Publishing book about servicing Muntz TVs - strangely, my high school library had it. Muntz engineers took "regular" Muntz sets and did the snip job to engineer sets strictly for the urban market. So I guess Muntz sold two types of sets - "near fringe" sets for the suburbs and "near transmitter" sets for the urban crowd.

Cheers,

[jmdocs]

Muntz was responsible for my favorite TV ad of all time, the billboard that featured the caricature of him as Napoleon, and the slogan "Stop Staring at Your Radio!"..and nothing else.

I also love that their jingle was, "There's something about a Muntz TV..." That something, judging by the comments of more knowledgable posters, was probably the smell of scorched electronics.

[dieseljeep]

There's tons of stories out there about the Muntz sets. They made two different models. One with a cascode tuner, and one with a penthode tuner. Naturally, the cascode tuner was for distant reception. Also, they ran the IF and RF stage wide open. One tech that worked for them told me that the better set would overload when closer to the transmitter. They had to put attenuator networks in the antenna line when the set overloaded. Unstable sync., picture pulling and buzz in sound.

[KentTeffeteller]

So, there was a better model with a fringe or near fringe tuner? Interesting.