Cheap Magnavox on eBay

[maxm]

Not mine, but it sure is cheap...
Is this color?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...112527295&rd=1

[drh4683]

Yep its color, the crt neck was busted off clean too. Probably hit the door frame when moving out of the room. Mag. combos are probably the heaviest combo out there.

[Eric H]

I have a Curtis Mathis 23" B&W combo that can give them some competition! The thing is made of some really thick, dense particle board and covered in real wood veneer. It about finished off my back a couple years ago when I had to move it.

Originally posted by drh4683
Mag. combos are probably the heaviest combo out there.

[peverett]

At one time I had a Curtis Mathis B&W combo from the late 1950s. This set contained a B&W TV, phono, AM/FM radio and reel to reel tape player. The case was made of wood, not masonite and was about 4 ft. high X 5 ft. long X 2 foot deep.

It took 4 of us to move it. This is why I do not have it anymore, I gave it to another collector so he could move it.

[maxm]

Originally posted by drh4683
Yep its color, the crt neck was busted off clean too. Probably hit the door frame when moving out of the room.

Wow! I really need to read descriptions better
I thought it seemed too cheap, even for a 60s console.
I wish I had room to rescue all these big consoles, in another 50 years, they would probably be worth something...

[Jeffhs]

Originally posted by maxm
Wow! I really need to read descriptions better
I thought it seemed too cheap, even for a 60s console.
I wish I had room to rescue all these big consoles, in another 50 years, they would probably be worth something...

I quit trying to collect those old sets years ago. (I had one old Zenith 23" console TV in the late '60s; the other sets in my collection were portables/table models, except for a rather longish blonde Admiral console TV that looked, IIRC, as if it might have been a 3-way entertainment system at one time.) They are OK if you have the room for them (as I did when I lived in a 3-bedroom house in suburban Cleveland) but now that I'm in a small apartment, such a huge console is out of the question. Besides, even if I had the room for something like that, I wouldn't want one, because of the way those three-way consoles are set up. If, for example, something happens to disable or impair the AM/FM tuner/amplifier section in any way, you also lose the TV sound, as the TV uses that amp as its audio section (the sound also comes through the console's speakers).

Too bad the CRT in that console was wrecked when the neck broke off. A new tube should be a start to fixing things up as good as new, as everything else seems to be OK according to the description--but if I had the set I'd still go through it and recap it, replace all weak or questionable tubes, reconverge the replacement CRT; the usual stuff we AKers do as a matter of course when restoring old sets.

I hate to think what the shipping charges would be if someone, say, from out West or in California wins this auction. I would guess at least $100. Even if someone from my area (northeast Ohio, 35 miles from Cleveland) won this thing, the charges would be high, even though Indianapolis is only about 350 miles from me.

Those old Maggies (and other 3-way consoles from RCA, Zenith, Curtis Mathes, et al.) were good sets, but they were big, heavy, and, of course, there was the drawback I mentioned above pertaining to the audio section. I've seen a few of the Magnavox consoles; yes, they are huge--especially the three-way units with TV, AM/FM and phono. However, one can get the same effect with individual components, as I did with my own entertainment system. The beauty of individual units is that, if one goes bad, you won't lose the use of the others, as all components are independent of one another; that is, if the TV goes bad, you can still use the stereo, for example.

BTW: That Magnavox console on ebay may be cheap as far as opening bids go, but the broken CRT will cost quite a bit to replace (especially if it must be done professionally), so it may be this thing won't be so cheap in the long run. The winner of the auction will probably spend more money on a new CRT than his/her winning bid.