Nostalgic dialog: buying & selling used TVs

[Glenz75]

About 10 years ago I was making quite a healthy profit on selling colour TV sets at $100 a pop.. and people were happily paying for these old 1970's Philips K9 TV sets. For those that don't know what a Phillps K9 is heres a link to an example on my vintage TV page - http://nzvintagetvradio.blogspot.co....blog-post.html
These were and still are in my opinion one of the best TV sets ever made.
But now days I wouldn't even dream of trying to sell even a modern BPC CRT TV.
Yep..sign of the times... everyone wants the latest and greatest these days...

[radiotvnut]

We have a local facebook page for buying and selling items. A while back, I advertised a later model silver Apex 24" TV with all the jacks for $35. After several days, someone expressed an interest and tried to talk me down to $25. I thought for a few minutes and told them $30 was the best I could do. IMHO, $25 was too cheap to sell a set like that, I don't care how obsolete most people think it is.

Then, I tried to sell that '84 Zenith console that you've seen in a recent thread. I started out at $30 with zero interest. I knocked it down to $20, still no interest.

Today, in a very disgusted mood, I posted the following smartass ad:


"OK, let's try this one final time. I have for sale a 25" Zenith floor model color TV in good condition. I started out wanting $30, then $20; and, now it's $15 FIRM. I know it's 30 years old and I know it's not flat enough for most people; but, it's a working color TV and $15 is a steal. And, I apologize for sounding so grumpy. It's just that I remember when I could easily get $100+ for a TV like this and there was a time I could get more than $15 for a small B&W set. Of course, that was before everyone got so snobby and thought they had to own the "latest & greatest"."

Now, I seriously doubt I'll sell this TV and really didn't expect to when I put the ad up. In fact, my ad may even result in me getting blocked from using the page. The purpose of that ad was more for letting these modern day snobs know my feelings more than anything else.

[Username1]

Ha Ha - your stories are pretty funny! But the world is very stupid, you guys are looking at a very small part of it. My wife sells Avon, and its a MLM kinda thing, you can sign up others on yer team and so on...... Well we live in hill-billy NY I mean real hill-billy. To start sellin' Avon you only pay $10. you get an account, 10 catalogs for this week, 10 for 2 weeks from now. After that you have to buy your own..... Well after a while some of her local sign ups call and complain they ain't makin any money...... First question "How many books did you hand out this week, and did you follow up ?" Answer.... "I didn't order any books....." Avon career ended. There are plenty of 'em that she drives across town, and meets with them, they say "I don't have $10." Others say they ain't ordering books and show up at her flea market booth expecting her to supply them with supplies for their business..... The better ones send in an online info response wanting to sign up, when she calls starts talking they hang up on her..... Or their phone has been turned off (very common) You gotta hope these people will soon be living under a bridge somewhere......

I tell ya- years ago when Einstein was around people may have been down to using only 10% of their brain, today its got to be less than 3% and dropping fast!

[dieseljeep]

I quit selling used sets when the big-box stores started selling new 19" sets, for around $200. That would be around 1982, or so.
The only sets I sold after that, were the freebees I aquired, every so often.

[holmesuser01]

Early to mid 1980's is when I pretty much stopped, too.

I did manage to sell a few really ornate cabinet sets that were made out of real wood to several folks whose living room consoles had died. I still do minor repairs on a big Magnavox custom console that is in a cherry wood cabinet. It's on its 2nd CRT, and I still have one new spare on hand. If the current tube dies, I have a feeling today that the owner will opt for the CRT before they go messing up the living room with something modern.

I've never seen another Magnavox like this one. On the little model ID tag, it's marked CUSTOM. It's a tube chassis, and has only required sweep, and audio output tubes in all these years. It was built in Fort Wayne, and features a pair of 15" woofers, midranges and horn tweeters. There is no phono/radio system, and never was. On the TV chassis, the sound PCB has everything except an output tube socket. I got it from the family of a doctor that lived near me. It took 4 people to get it out of their house. Until I sold it, I kept it wrapped in blankets.

I forgot to add: It used a nice little audio amplifier for sound.

[davet753]

I sold used sets right up until I closed my store (1998). At that time, you couldn't give away a tube type TV, but a decent looking 19" would bring about $40, or if it was a cable ready, remote control model the price might go up to about $60. A console would fetch about $80 (if the cabinet was in good shape).

It's amazing how cheap things got as the 80's and 90's progressed. In 1988, I charged $40 for a "Clean-Lube-and Adjust" repair job on a VCR....in 1998 you could buy a new VCR for about $50.

[Charlie]

Originally Posted by davet753

It's amazing how cheap things got as the 80's and 90's progressed. In 1988, I charged $40 for a "Clean-Lube-and Adjust" repair job on a VCR....in 1998 you could buy a new VCR for about $50.

I bought my first VCR in 87... a Teac 2-head Stereo (not Hi-Fi) for about 300 bucks... so back then I could see charging 40 to give it a tune-up. My next VCR came a couple of years later... a Teac MV-550 4-hd Hi-Fi for about 350 bucks. I used that VCR for 12 years before it croaked.

Those were big investments back then (and even more expensive in the 70's).

[davet753]

Originally Posted by Charlie

I bought my first VCR in 87... a Teac 2-head Stereo (not Hi-Fi) for about 300 bucks... so back then I could see charging 40 to give it a tune-up. My next VCR came a couple of years later... a Teac MV-550 4-hd Hi-Fi for about 350 bucks. I used that VCR for 12 years before it croaked.

Those were big investments back then (and even more expensive in the 70's).

In the early 90's, I was a Zenith, Crosley, and Quasar dealer. I remember buying plain-jane 2-head Quasar VCR's for $240 and selling them for $299 (which was a good price and profit margin at the time). Seems like the 4-head models were about $100 higher.

The first 4-head stereo VCR's I sold were Zenith models. They were a very well built unit that Zenith sourced from JVC, but were very expensive. Since most people didn't even have a TV with stereo sound, I didn't sell very many of them.

At any rate, when the retail price on new VCR's fell below $100, I "saw the writing on the wall" on the VCR end of my business.

[bgadow]

I guess it was around 95 or 96 that I bought my mother a new VCR for Christmas. (the '86 Panasonic was about shot, a lot of hours on that machine) The local TV/appliance shop, a good customer of mine, wasn't far from getting out of the TV side of things but when I went in there he had a stack of RCA VCR's for, I think, $169. WalMart had the same model for $129. I decided to go ahead and buy it from my customer. I realized his profit margin was tight when I pulled out my credit card; he had to go in the back and do the math, to see if the fee would hurt him too much.

There was a place that did nothing but VCR repairs, and they did lots of sublet work for shops all around. Had flyers in all the TV shops plus all the mom & pop video rental places that used to be everywhere. Seems like the price was $45 for a long time, and might have started out higher...they dropped the price for a time but then closed their doors. They shared the building with an auction house; I was in there one time and peeked over to see shelves loaded with hundreds of VCRS stacked up like library books.