Big TV find in Detroit area, continued...

[Carmine]

I had barely finished this posting...

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=65647

...when Captain Moody told us all about the two old sets placed in the trash with a note "More TVs inside". So, unless otherwise challenged, I am declaring St. Clair Shores, Michigan to be the "Crazy-old-man-hording-old-TVs" capital of the world! Just another reason I love my city!

I went over to the house after Capt' Moody, and brought home the following: (In one truckload I might add!)



Here's an old RCA, in very good shape (The sets in the attic faired much better than the basement, which was simply a fire wating to happen!)



A Monkey Wards set... There were a high percentage of store-brand sets. I grabbed them just because you rarely see them. This one was supposed to have legs.



Here's a 21" Maggie... I know you aren't supposed to hard-start 'em, but I figured most would end-up back in the trash unless they worked. The ones that looked reasonably safe, I plugged in with mixed results. This one mostly hummed, with no HV.



Close-up of the controls... Note the "Power Tuning" button!? It's not remote, so was it really that damn hard to turn a knob?



Here's a Moto for ya...

Continued in next post....

[Carmine]

Here's the only color-console I got, an Admiral. Fired it up after several decades, and got a weak, blurry image of Judge Judy. CRT is a 25AP? Seems like a pretty early rectangular.



A GE Portable.



A Quasar that I grabbed for the capt'n.



Obviously a very early edition...



Wards color set... This thing weighed a ton!



Close-up. Typical weird-looking Japanese set.



Some of the books I found in the basement.



Left-to-Right: A Philco "briefcase", covered in mold. A Magnavox Solid-State B&W. I grabbed this one because I figured it might be a pretty early SS set... Didn't Magnavox have one of the first? It also has some kind of photoeye sensor! Last is a SeArS (old logo) portable. Pretty crude, looks like a metalshop project. No UHF.

Continued....

[Carmine]

Kinda cool looking Philco 9" set. I might stick that in my computer room, next to my monitor... Will match my 70s room perfect.



Of course, here's a tube color Zenith.. This thing probably hasn't seen 120 volts since Jimmy Carter was prez (Judging by the dust, and how far buried it was in the basement.) I swear, that's exactly how the picture came up, without touching a control! Consider it's taken in broad daylight too! If that doesn't convince you who built a good set.... Too bad the company's dead, or it would make a good ad!



I realized that I had forgotten to take a shot of an Olympic and a Motorola, until after I had pulled my truck back in. The Olympic looks vaguely "European"... Like a Grundig radio.

I also forgot to take a shot of a 23" Zenith B&W set in an early American maple cabinet. You can see a little of it in the Admiral color picture, and in the group shot below. It's a Space Commander 300. Has sound, no HV.



Right now, I've got all these sets parked in the garage of my rental house (My tenant is getting a break on her rent, so I told her the garage is MINE, lol)

However I can't keep them there forever, so if you see anything you'd like to have, or trade for... Send me a PM!

[Adam]

Wow! That is the single largest old TV find I've ever heard of. I used to have that exact same Zenith color, I found it on the curb, brought it home, plugged it in and it worked, and I used it regularly for years.

"Crazy-old-man-hording-old-TVs" --- I hope if you hoard old TVs (like myself) that doesn't automatically mean you will eventually go crazy.

[Chad Hauris]

Great finds! It's always exciting to come across a big amount of TV's like this. Looks like that Zenith Chromacolor just needs some new caps and should be perfect. They do seem to have the best CRT's.
Good looking Dodge truck too! What is that, like a 74 or so?
We really like our 1986 Dodge with Tommy lift at the shop. Still has a carbureted 360 engine.

[rca2000]

/Left-to-Right: A Philco "briefcase", covered in mold. A Magnavox Solid-State B&W. I grabbed this one because I figured it might be a pretty early SS set... Didn't Magnavox have one of the first? It also has some kind of photoeye sensor! Last is a SeArS (old logo) portable. Pretty crude, looks like a metalshop project. No UHF.

Continued....[/QUOTE]

I have wanted one a while, and posted so on another site.

If you want to part with it, I am probably comeong to AK fest. I have an RCA ctc-53 I would trade for it, (needs vert. trepair, but works somewhat, and has a good crt)

[veg-o-matic]

Wow!
Can I come over and play?

veg

[Sandy G]

The little Sears set is talkin' to me..It's Cuuuuuuuute....

[bgadow]

Wow! Had that heart going THUMP THUMP THUMP, didn't it!?

The little Sears-I had one that I should have kept, it was even older/more crude than this. I think it is a Toshiba. I think that series of sets was the first "American" TV to be imported.

Zeniths from that era are just amazing. There have been many which I brought home, after years of neglect, and they worked fine. A perfect example of how to design & build something right.

I like the GE color 18". Our family's old GE console, from when I was a kid, was that age. I have an 18" but it's just a little newer. Yours has a control panel very similiar to our old set. I'd assume it has the series string chassis instead of the transformer setup of our console. (KE, or similiar)

The control panel arrangement on the Maggie console looks like it would skin your knuckles if you used the knob! But that alone would be a silly reason for power tuning.

I'd like to know who built the Airline color set. I know they sourced a lot from Admiral & Wells-Gardner but if it is foreign???

I hope most of these can be saved in one way or another.

As for the truck, 72 or 73, right? Super clean looking-that was my favorite of the grilles they used.

[Carmine]

RCA2000, clean out your PM box!

The truck is a '73 for the record, mostly original paint. 3/4 ton with a big-block, so it's a good TV hauler.

[rca2000]

I don't know how I always let it get full, without knowing it!!

[peverett]

This find does not hold a candle to the TV shop that I cleaned out in Athen's Texas. There was a 24x24 foot room full of mostly TVs and a few radios.

The TV serviceman's house and property was also full of stuff. Way to much stuff or one person. I never want to do that again.

[Chad Hauris]

I went to one of those TV shops, this one was in Snyder, TX. It was packed with hundreds of tube type sets, including round color sets, made two trips, filled up a Dodge 1-ton van plus Dodge pickup. He sold me the sets $10.00 each...unfortunately I think he has since sent some of the sets to the dump. I still have some of those sets I have not even got started on working on and that was 2 yrs ago! Sometime I will have to try and make another run out there.
The ones I have worked on so far almost all had tough dog problems like bad CRT's, burned yokes, bad flybacks, but I got some spare parts from the shop including a new 18" color CRT so have had pretty good luck on the repairs.

[jpdylon]

I had one of those early quasar sets that was a hybrid. It had an excellent picture, but always seemed to have trouble with the color oscilllator. I never did figure out why it kept randomly loosing color. I ended up selling it.

I would love that arline color set , but I know shipping would be a killer. If you take any with you to arizona I can drive out there. What's that color console sittting next to the rca near the door?

[colortrakker]

I passed up a Zenith a lot like that one about 10 years ago. Still can't stand myself for it. Bad timing and distance will probably kill my chances of preserving this one. C'est la vie...

PS to Jordan: that color console is the Admiral Carmine was talking about.