It's Raining TV's!

[Electronic M]

A display is perfectly natural. Get all your best restos on a shelf and say 'check it out, I collected all these cool sets got them working and made a little museum'.

A hobby is a hobby not a business. They have no right to force you (and are foolish to compel you) to sell your good stuff when you've just got it working. Now granted it is important to have limits...I've got 2 whole bedrooms, and ~70% of a large basement for my collection presently, but had less in past houses/apts...Whenever my keeper radio/TV sets start to fill those set limits and I know soon I'll not be able to fit more I tend to rank based on how much I like stuff, and then sell off the bottom 10-30%...In that way I keep the best stuff and after every round of unloading/refilling/reappraising the general quality/value of my collection as a whole improves. I want to have a BIG collection I can show off to most people, not a chaotic hoard that I can't show anyone....Granted I had to buy a couple of large lots of TVs before the slow selling winter season so I'm closer to hoard than I want to be...Once I can get to a decent swap meet I plan to drop a couple of SUV loads to fix that.

When tight on money it is not bad to buy some sets to flip to make the hobby sustain (or try to sustain) it's self, but once you have dough and can buy dream sets/as many as you want flipping or taking repair commissions holds less appeal since it may eat time for your own sets that you want to fix.

I've got over 150 vintage radios well over 50 TVs made from 1946-76 countless LPs, a classic car (it will be plural in the next year or two as I save up), audio gear, test equip, rare recording formats, and numerous small 'side collections', many shelves, and no one gives me ANY crap as long as I respect my spatial limits....Not that I'll let anyone give me crap if I'm within my limits.
You can make a collection into a REAL COOL THING to brag over if you collect cool stuff, make it work and look good, keep it clean and ORGANIZE/DISPLAY it well.

You need to be as stubborn as a mule and as fierce as a badger to deal with closed minded busybodies that have dopey ideas in their heads about collecting.

BTW: If you can unmount a CRT from a TV, spray paint, mask off places you don't want to paint, and buy a ~$15 can of SlipPlate online, then you can re-coat new aquadag onto a CRT....It is super easy. I finally bought a can a few months back and have done ~6 CRTs so far...Every CRT came out well with little effort. IIRC Banderson and others here have made threads with pictures showing how to do it (it ain't rocket surgery ).