Estate Sale Finds In 2005!

[drh4683]

You have not seen much posting on this thread this year in 2005 so far have you? Its not that Ive been blowing off estate sales. I have been going to estate sales almost every week and have not found a THING! 2005 is a very poor estate sale year and I think my luck of finding nice old sets is almost gone! Im hanging on to basically everything Ive got, as if I were to let it go- thats it- I'll never see anything like it again! Definitly keep all the sets you have!

This is a resale shop find in Aurora, IL on 5-21-05. $20, not bad. Its a KV-1200 which is a trinitron and comes with a factory stand which Ive never seen before. The stand is custom made to fit this TV. It has a great picture but it is not completely solid state as the front indicates. I took the back off to dust it off and found out there is a 3AT2 HV rectifier in the HV cage!
I know "DAN WALSH" owned it, as he inscribed his name and drivers license number on the side of the CRT bezel. If "DAN WALSH" is still around, he would be living in Libertyville, IL and is 64 years old (1941 off his license number) Anyway, I hate when people inscribe names into TV sets. He even inscribed the stand! Its a nice set and dont find them, so Im very happy with it!

[drh4683]

close up

[drh4683]

TV on, nice picture

[Jeffhs]

Doug,

I just read your post. Sorry to hear you're having no luck with estate sales, but maybe things will pick up eventually. I notice there are very few antique TVs showing up even on ebay these days (I saw exactly one '50s Zenith, and two "Spirit of '76" Zenith Bicentennial portables when I did a search for that brand of television this afternoon); most of the TVs being offered at auction lately have been late model plasma/LCD, widescreen and projection sets, and the occasional 1980s-vintage System 3 color console, not to mention older table models (older meaning 10-20 years). There seem to be more antique/vintage radios than TVs on ebay of late.

Your decision to keep all your old TVs is a good one, if you're not finding many sets at estate sales. I also intend to keep every one of my antique and vintage radios for the same reason as you mentioned. I just scored (as in about two months ago) a Zenith Trans-Oceanic portable radio (solid state, 1958-62 vintage), and also have a Zenith R-70 high-fidelity AM/FM portable (1980), in addition to a K-731 AM/FM hi-fi table set (1963) and a 1951 Consol-Tone, along with a Zenith H-480W AM/FM stereo clock radio from 1980; all but the H480 were ebay scores (I purchased the H480 new). All of these radios work and sound better than most of today's import sets. Who knows when, or if, we may see the likes of these sets again? As far as radios go, I think we'll still see them showing up on ebay from time to time (I see Zenith three-way portables, consoles, etc. almost every day there), but the collector's market for old TV sets is not what it once was. The Big Lots stores have a slogan, "When it's gone, it's gone"; the same, it seems, can be said for antique and vintage radios and TVs made by the original Zenith Radio Corporation, et al.

I don't see very many old TVs on curbs or treelawns in my neighborhood anymore either, although the other day I did spot a 32" Mitsubishi color set near the trash barrels behind the apartment building where I live. I didn't grab the set for three reasons: one, I wasn't sure whether it was working or not, 2, it was far too big and heavy for me to lift, and finally, I knew I wouldn't have the room for anything that big, not to mention the fact that I already have a 19" Thomson-built RCA that still works well on cable (I bought the set new five years ago and it still works great). These are the kind of TVs we are seeing more and more on treelawns nowadays, as folks get new high-definition widescreens (they may not realize that even analog televisions will work with high-definition signals if a converter box is used between the cable or antenna and the set; the fact that analog sets won't produce HD pictures, however, may be the reason these sets get pitched when their owners get new high-definition receivers/monitors). The days of finding very old antique TVs on the streets, etc. may well be reaching their end, if they haven't ended already.

BTW, you are right about your Sony Trinitron not being 100-percent solid state, if there is a 3AT2 in the high-voltage cage. I wonder why Sony would advertise a TV set that way if they knew it still had a vacuum-tube HV rectifier? Maybe they don't consider the HV rectifier a tube. The set wouldn't be 100-percent solid-state anyway even if the HV rectifier were a high-voltage diode, as all TVs manufactured before the flat-screen (plasma, LCD) era have at least one vacuum tube in them (the CRT), even if the rest of the set is solid-state.

[peverett]

I have some small B&W Philco TVs that say "Solid State" across the front, but have tube HV rectifiers. I guess that this tube and the CRT did not count.

[bgadow]

Since hanging around here I have been paying lots more attention to what shows up in my travels. I did have some near misses in the last week. Stopped out to the local auction barn the other night after a friend called to tell me about some test gear they had. I knew the test gear wouldn't really interest me (and I was right) but I owed it to him to take a look. It was mostly military surplus meters. They did have, in the trash pile, a big color console but it turned out to be a Matsushita Quasar, all solid state, of course. There was some newer stuff on the pile but I didn't even bother to look. Years ago I got a working c.1960 Zenith bw console from there & then a higher-end GE color console from the late 60s. Both gone, sadly. Went to the flea market yesterday, lots of tv sets but all solid state. Most intersting was one guy with about half a dozen early 80s GE 19 inchers, obviously out of a motel.

[drh4683]

A find at last! Found some nice sets this weekend for good prices. Picked up a nice 68 RCA GJ-709WR! the "Bradfield" An RCA console remote set! A CTC-35 chassis.
Heres how it was found:
Found at a home in Addison, IL on 6-4-05. The house was loaded with stuff, tons of stuff. I saw the remote control for this TV sitting on top of a new sony triniton set. My first though: Someone just wanted the old remote control. Then, I realized the sony TV was sitting on top of another console, completly covered with a blanket. All kinds of stuff was in the way of this set, once I moved it out of the way, I lifted up the blanket and there it was!
Cateract free all original set. Got the set for $25. Luckily someone at the sale was able to help me get it into the truck.

Once I got home, powered it up, blank raster no sound. I hate that symptom but at least the fly was good. Tubes were all good, even the 6GH8's. I think the previous owner tried to fix the set with this problem thinking tubes would do it. It didnt, so I got new RCA tubes in the set!
Had to pull the chassis. Found a burnt up 405v B+ drop resistor on the deflection board (3300ohm 3w wire). That resistor was B+ for the AGC and IF circuit. Did some tests down the line and found the cause of the burnt resistor to be a shorted 1000pf cap on the IF board, to the grid of the 6GM6 2nd IF! As a result of that cap shorting out, too much current was drawn through a 470 ohm carbon resistor, drastically lowering its resistance to 50 ohms! That resistor over heated and once that resistor went down in value enough the wire resistor went up in smoke. I first Disconnected the shorted cap and jumpered a new 3300 WW resistor then powered the set up, sure enough snow sound came back. Changed the defective components and an out of tolerance 180k resistor on the IF board.
Another typical RCA problem is a locked up UHF tuner. the lubricating grease dries on the dial shaft where is slides through a bushing, making tuning impossible. Took the mechanical components apart cleaned and lubricated.

Slid the chassis back in, and the picture came on nice and clear. Just needed a touch up of the convergence and grey scale.
Remote control just needed a touch up on the oscillator coil in the hand unit and changes all the functions as it should. Its not a low hour set, but not a high hour set either, shows its wear and tear for being used over the years. The set now works well and has a really nice color picture, better than the photo I took!

[drh4683]

this is the original remote control for the set. The RCA block letters were used, durring the 1968 transition when RCA VICTOR name was dropped. The TV Bezel is RCA VICTOR as its the same bezel used 67 sets.
Next to the remote are the defective componets. That yellow resistor looking part is actually a 1000pf capacitor.

[drh4683]

Typical good working RCA has a near perfect picture! (For whatever reason, my camera makes the set look like its out of convergence. It converged great!) You dont need HDTV with when you have an old RCA TV!

[drh4683]

Same house, another TV find! Upstairs in the hall was this nice Philco safari! Turns out, this set was all complete and it even worked still! Nice bright picture. Didnt need to touch a thing but clean the volume control. The vertical size was good. Got this set for $30. The people running the sale knew this TV had some value. Thanks ebay.......Luckily it was far cheaper than ebay prices.

[drh4683]

good picture on this one. Never had a safari untill now.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by drh4683

Typical good working RCA has a near perfect picture! (For whatever reason, my camera makes the set look like its out of convergence. It converged great!) You dont need HDTV with when you have an old RCA TV!

Congratulations on getting that RCA "Bradfield" set working so well. It may be the resolution of my computer monitor, but I couldn't see any misconvergence in your set's picture (or the effect of it, as you say your camera causes). My RCA (Thomson) 19" color set, which I purchased new in 1999, makes a good picture as well; when these new sets are working as they should they work great. I understand Thomson has finally licked the OB tuner problem in their newest sets (actually in the last couple years), by getting the tuner off the main PCB and mounting it separately, in another section of the cabinet. I had mine repaired for a tuner-related problem several months after I bought the set, but the technician did a complete resolder of the ground points around the shield as well as correcting the problem I called him for. That was all the set needed. It has now been some time (I forget whether it's two, three years ) since the repairs were made; the TV still works like a champ on cable, VCR and DVD, with the picture absolutely excellent, even if it is only 19 or 20 inches (the warranty info for this set refers to it as a "nineteen-twenty inch mono" monitor/receiver, so it may be a 20-incher after all).

I agree with you as to HDTV (I intend to keep my set as well even after the digital transition--I'll just have Comcast put in a high-definition cable box when the time comes), although I do wonder, since you don't have cable, what you'll do with all your sets once the analog stations are taken off the air at the end of next year (if we can believe what the FCC is telling us about the transition from analog to digital--personally, I don't).

For that matter, have you finished putting up that giant TV antenna farm you said you were going to install when you moved from Downers Grove to where you are now? I looked up Batavia, IL on the Internet (Google) the other day, and found out that you are over 40 miles from Chicago. I don't know how far that places you from the city's TV stations, but in any case I bet your antennas are huge deep-fringe systems.

[Charlie]

Congrats on your finds, Doug! Man, that RCA makes a nice vivid picture! The Philco is really neat, too!

[jstout66]

NICE NICE NICE!!!!!!!!! Like the RCA and kudos on getting a Safari. I tried to get one on eBay, and those usually go pretty high. You got a good deal!

[Chad Hauris]

That RCA is a good find...looks like a ctc-31 or 38 but has the "deluxe" chassis like the CTC-16.