What was your first vintage tv?

[zenithfan1]

Man, Magnavox sure made some pretty cabinets back then.

[veg-o-matic]

Originally Posted by consoleguy67

My fiancee(now wife) helped me pick up this monster in CT., on a cold,rainy night.

...and that's how you could tell she was a Keeper

[llcvt15]

My first vintage set was a Magnavox console too (mines color though), found it in a ditch off the highway of all places. Some of the best things in life are free. I've had people make offers on it but I just can't sell it.

[maxhifi]

1973 vintage 16 inch color zenith, with sc-100 single button remote control. Picked it up at a second hand shop in 1993. Between the remote control and the fact it used tubes, i had to take it! Someone had adjusted every single real panel control, so after a day of fiddling got it to display a nice picture. it's basically been in use more or less since i got it... Only the past few years it's needed attention. i have always opened it up every couple of years, to vacuum out dust, and admire the hand wired chassis.

[Adam]

Mine was that Zenith I mentioned in the other thread. 16" b/w tube set in a black plastic cabinet (early 70's?). It was an odd one, the controls normally on the side (vert/bright/cont) were on a copper-colored metal panel on the front right side of the set with the channel knobs and vol. I've never seen that exact model again.

That was in the fall of '85, in the next summer I picked up 3 more sets at garage sales: two identical 19" RCA b/w tabletop tube sets in fake-wood plastic cabinets (late 60's?), and a 1978 Zenith 9" b/w ss tv in a white plastic cabinet (I've recently picked up a red version of this set).

That summer I also picked up 2 radios: a mid-60s Zenith AM clock radio in a brown plastic cabinet (I picked up a white version of this radio last year), and a 1939 RCA plaskon table radio (which I still have).

[andy]

...

[Phil Nelson]

The first old TV that I restored was this RCA 14-S-7070G tabletop.



In hindsight, a couple of the 1960s TVs that I watched in college and grad school would qualify as borderline vintage now. One was a briefcase style like a Seventeener, but I don't recall the manufacturer. I still have one of the others somewhere; it was missing the tuner knob, so I changed channels with a pliers.

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html

[Sandy G]

I remember buying a mid'60s B/W console-Wood construction & all- & hauling it up to where we Shot, & Executing it...This was about 1984, it was just a Junky Old TV...We pulled the Tubes out, set 'em on top, & Plinked 'em off...We left it there, this was in the summer, by Thanksgiving, it had been shot at so many times, preciuos little remained that could be identified as a TV...

[bgadow]

Like others, the first ones I had weren't "vintage" at the time. About '80 or so my aunt & uncle gave us a spare set they weren't using. It was for my sisters and I but it was in their room so I never quite claimed it. It was an early 60s GE portable, 19" briefcase style, one of the first to use Compactrons. A good set, actually. Eventually the tuning got too weak to pick up anything, I'm sure it was just a bad tube. I suppose it ended up in the trash at some point By about '83 another uncle gave me a set of my own. It was a late 60s GE table model, I'm going to guess a KC chassis or something like that, big, heavy metal cabinet 23v set. I had a love/hate relationship with it! It was a real poor performer in most every respect but it was at the same time very cool (to me). I complained about it so much that my Dad hauled it away; he told me it was going "to the woods" but one day a lunch lady at school (her son worked for my Dad) told me, with much joy, "I have your old TV!". I've often wondered if she still does! I'd sure like to have it back.

But, as I said, those weren't considered vintage to me at the time. That honor goes to this set: there wasn't much for this nerdy kid to do, living out in the country with no close friends. Most Saturdays I would ride my bicycle the 2 miles into town and browse around the antique stores. (well, it was that or the hardware store! Sometimes I'd venture into the TV shop-I should have hung out there more) Anyway, the largest antique store was/is in a big old 2 1/2 story building but only the first floor was open to the public, or so I thought. I'd probably been going in there for a year or more when one day somehow I figured out that the second floor was open, they just always kept the door closed. I wandered up and found the place stocked with some very cool stuff. As I neared the end of the row I spotted some furniture arranged just like a typical 50s living room, and guess what was at the center? A '54 RCA Victor 21" bw console! I had only seen pictures of sets like this and my little heart beat fast. There was no price marked so I rushed downstairs and was told $25. I had enough saved up and so, just like that, it was mine! Better yet, they agreed to deliver it between 3-4pm Monday, right after I got off the school bus but before my parents or my sisters were home! It was weeks before anyone knew about that set. The TV actually worked quite well. It did have "conehead" syndrome but back then I didn't know the first thing about replacing caps or anything like that. This all happened around '85 or so. I watched many an episode of Mr. Belvedere on that TV. Sometime in the early 90s I tried recapping it and afterwards it didn't work at all. The cabinet gotten pretty beaten up over the years and I'm not sure what I did with the knobs. But, there it sits, in the TV room. Someday I'll get it going again.

[Eric H]

My first vintage set was an RCA 8-TS-30, picked it up at a Swap Meet just because it looked ancient to me at the time (early 80's?) some time after that I got a 721TS, funny I don't remember where that one came from but it was probably given or sold to me by my TV repairman friend I had worked for earlier.

[timmy]

1st ever, 1963 sears silvertone roundie color with a ctc12 clone chassis. ampico kid from the forum here found it in scranton pa, how i had missed it i dont know. but it was outside under a tarp because it was in the way in the garage and i rescued it 1 day befor a rain storm. as some of you guys here already know because i got alot of help regarding hv issues.

[Jeffhs]

My first vintage set, IIRC, was an early1950s Capehart console. My great-aunt had just gotten a new portable TV, so she gave me the Capehart set. Worked reasonably well the short time I had it. It eventually quit several years later, but I saved the cabinet and converted it to a tool chest (this was decades before the Internet and VK). That TV was one of the very early '50s models with a round CRT (16GP4 I think) and perhaps a continuous tuner. This set also had a small box in series with the power cord (the box sat in the bottom of the cabinet, near the 12" speaker), which years later I found out was probably some sort of line voltage booster, for use in rural areas where the pole transformers were literally miles apart and where the AC line voltage often varied a significant amount from day to night, or vice versa. I lived in a suburb of Cleveland at the time with reliable electric service, so had no use for the booster, but since it was in series with the power cord I left it where it was (didn't seem to affect the normal operation of the set).

That Capehart TV was the first in a long line of vintage sets I owned in my life, most of which were trash day finds that almost always needed very little to get them working again, until I finally I had enough money to buy a new set. My first vintage color set was a 1964 Silvertone 19" roundie I got from a neighbor of mine in my hometown. The push-pull on-off switch on the volume control and the circuit breaker were bad, but once these were replaced the set worked reasonably well ... until one day in the early 1970s when the video output circuit board cracked (I've told the story many times here in VK) and put the set permanently out of commission. I didn't know much or anything about repairing PC boards at the time (though I did try, with no luck, to repair the cracked-out tube socket), so I trashed it and reluctantly replaced it with a 1961 Philco b&w, which lasted until I found another Silvertone (rebadged Toshiba) 16" color set, in a trash pile in my hometown, around 1975. That set was the first color set I ever had that actually worked as soon as I got it home, and was the second in a short series of color TVs I owned. The rest, as the expression goes, is history.

[kx250rider]

My first hobby TV (I can't say vintage, because it was a reasonably late model used set at the time)... A Magnavox 24" table model B&W in a masonite cabinet. Got it when I was 9, from a neighbor who was going to give it to the Goodwill, I still have it. My first vintage set (bought as a vintage set) was a '49 Hoffman 10" blond oak table model with doors. l got that in '77 (age 10) and I'd venture to say it was just about at the birth of "vintage or collectable" TV.

Charles

[Electronic M]

Well the first "vintage TV set" I had was the frist TV I have memories of watching. It was a Motorola WID set, which my inquisitive mind killed when I was very young, I proceeded to "take it apart" it years later.

I have a 1964 sony portable that was the smallest consumer TV in the world at that time. I bought it at a thrift store between when I was 9 to 12 years old(I moved then), and I just found that set after the move quite reciently. I was into radios then and did not see it as collectible untill reciently. I just bought it because it looked cool.



The first vintage set I bought as a vintage set is my 1958 GE 14T017 portable. I bought it at a FAWG meet around 6 years ago. I had seen it at some meets but it was either NFS or I did not get to it before the seller left. It seemed at first that they were getting it repaired, then gave up and let it change hands before it showed up at another meet, I inquired, and was given a offer I could not pass up.........I was offered that set not working, and a free flyback tester for 5$!

It has great sound and NO HV. I haven't worked on it since my TV repair skills were in there infancy so I have yet to fix it. I reciently found it again, and acquired a red one so I should be able to make one or more working sets out of the two in the near future.

[Beachboy]

My first TV was also my first vintage TV. It was a 21" (I think) Zenith B/W tabletop in a blonde woodgrain metal cabinet. I'm guessing it was 1955 vintage and purchased new by my grandparents. The picture tube had been failing, and even with a brightner on it, had to be watched in a dark room. Back then, people usually traded in their old TV's when they bought new ones, but my grandparents "gave up" the $18 trade in credit, and instead, gave it to me in 1966 as a Christmas present. I used it for a couple years until the picture got so dark it wasn't pleasant, and then stored it for 10 or so years in my parent's basement until dad got tired of seeing it and hauled it to the trash.