Picked up a GE 12" B&W

[radiotvnut]

A couple weeks ago, my pastor's grandson, who's a friend of mine, told me that he found an old TV in his Grandfather's attic. I asked him if he'd get rid of it and he said he didn't see any reason why he wouldn't. The following Sunday, I asked about the TV and he wasn't even aware that there was a TV in his attic; but, said I was more than welcome to it.

Today, my friend got it down and it's an '83 GE 12" B&W set using the XJ-A chassis. This set was made in Korea and uses a Goldstar chassis and CRT. I've seen this same chassis used in Emerson, Goldstar, Midland, and other brands of 12" B&W sets from this time period.

The set produced a picture; but, the controls were dirty and the CRT was very weak. I cleaned the controls, rejuvenated the CRT, and it now has a much better picture. BTW, I don't run into too many Goldstar or Samsung 12" B&W CRT's that are still strong. Even back in the early '90's, I still saw a good many of these CRT's that were weak.

This must have been the set that took the place of the long-lived "XB" chassis sets that were actually built by GE. And, those older "XB" sets were better built and better performers than the later rebadged Korean sets.

[Kamakiri]

Funny enough, lately I've been thinking of picking up as many of these types of sets as I can get my hands on. They were at the curb every week once the broadcast signal changed, and I think that they are going to become the next collectible in 20 years, similar to the way people collect old radios today. They'll still work, and will be very rare by then.

[compucat]

This set is from the era when most 12" black and white TVs sarted to be cheaply built. I have one of the mid to late 70s GE Performance Televisions with the solid state chassis that is quite well made. I do have a Quasar that I restored that is similar to your set in construction. Many of the 12" sets from the early to mid '80s had flyback failures within the first few years, especially the Samsungs. Twelve inch b&w sets are one of my favorite collectible categories.

[radiotvnut]

From around '89-'93, I used to make decent money off of these types of sets. I'd buy/pick up broken ones that ranged in price between free-$5. Usually, I could fix them for under $5 and they were an easy $25 sale. Power supply problems, vertical problems, weak CRT's, and dirty controls were the most common problems. The only ones I remember junking were those that had a CRT that wouldn't rejuvenate or those sets that had a bad flyback. At one time, some of the mail order parts houses had flybacks for various 12" b&w sets for under $5. Starting around '93, the demand for these started going downhill and it quickly got to the point where $5-$10 was about all a good one would bring. I think the last one I actually sold was in the early 2000's and I had a hard time getting $5 for it. Still, I like these sets and I pick them up whenever they become available.

[jr_tech]

Originally Posted by Kamakiri

Funny enough, lately I've been thinking of picking up as many of these types of sets as I can get my hands on. They were at the curb every week once the broadcast signal changed, and I think that they are going to become the next collectible in 20 years, similar to the way people collect old radios today. They'll still work, and will be very rare by then.

What is the approx cut-off date for this type of set (9-12" B/W )? I know that the colorful little 5" (jelly-bean) sets were made into the 2000s and may still be in production, but I am guessing that the larger sizes were phased out earlier. Can anybody pin down an "end" date?

jr

[radiotvnut]

The newest 12" B&W sets that I've actually seen and had my hands on were from the mid '90's. They were cheap knob tuned low quality TV's in plain black plastic cabinets and they ran off a 12V wall wart. The name on them was Action and I think they sold for $39.99. The channel knobs on these sets would break very easily. I've seen a few clear cased prison 12" B&W TV's that actually had cable ready tuners listed on ebay. These looked to have been from the late '90's-early 2000's; but, I can't say for sure since I've never actually had my hands on one.

I seem to remember some 19" B&W sets as late as '86-'87 and Zenith discontinued it's 22" B&W consoles in '81. I have a '78 22" Sylvania solid state B&W console and out of all the B&W sets, I think these later B&W consoles are among the hardest to find today. I don't think many large screen B&W sets were sold by the late '70's-early '80's and even fewer survive today.

Just before the DTV transition, one of the dollar stores had a huge pile of those 5" B&W sets for $14.99.

And, let's not forget about those oddball 12" and 19" Zenith B&W sets from the early '80's that had an LED channel display and a digital keypad style tuner. I read somewhere that there was a very rare 22" set that had the digital keypad tuner.

[radiotvnut]

I'll add that the build quality of most 12" B&W TV's started going down by the early '80's and, by the late '80's, build quality had really taken a fall. I've got an '86-'87 Magnavox that's a piece of junk in terms of quality. Many years ago, I had another Magnavox 12" set from the late '70's and it was a very solid set.

[zenith2134]

Hey I forget the chassis number but I had two nice Magnavox 12" b/w sets both from '78. Taiwanese. I was on a roll at 1 point where there were tons and tons of late 70s b/w solid state tv's on the curbs.
I should've saved more of em. The threads are here somewhere, and many have pictures.
The '78 magnavox I speak of had a high-quality Sarkes-Tarzian tuner and was great for d-x.

[bgadow]

Growing up I always kept my eye on the 12" sets, just to see how cheap they could sell for. Through the 80s most of them were in the $69.95-89.95 range, depending on the store and if they were on sale. I really thought it was something when somebody got them down to $59.95, and could hardly believe it when one of the big electronic stores advertised one on TV for $49.95. I do recall those wall-wart "Action" sets. For some reason my youngest sister bought one. Pretty poor.

On those 5" sets, seems like Rite Aid or somebody like that offered them for a time with a mail-in rebate, so your total cost would be $5.

[dieseljeep]

In the mid 80's, there was a promotion going on to sell time-shares in nothern Wisconsin. As an incentive to go there and listen to the pitch, they gave you a Bentley brand 5" bw tv. It didn't even come with a wall-wart power supply. It came with an order blank for one. It was something like $15 for one. I see them all over the place. Some of them didn't work right out of the box.

[Celt]

I had a mid-70's 9" Magnavox that was made by Sanyo. While nothing in the way of being a spectacular set, proved itself to be reliable.