Curtis Mathes circa 1980

[julianburke]

When I was selling used color sets in the 70's-1991, I bought used and usually non working CM's from a CM dealer. I actually liked them as they were easy fixer uppers and had plenty of parts for them. Chassis' were made by NEC and the most common problem beside weak CRT's was a shorted HO transistor in these trade ins. I also worked in a local picture tube rebuilding facility so I always got $30 rebuilt CRT's! At that time I would easily sell used CM's for around $200+ with a warranty. Many people still call me "The TV man"!

Because of the hype CM was advertising of "being darn well worth it" (5 year warranty), they were easy sells and probably sold several hundred over a 10 year period. I made good money on them back then on sales and repairs. They were very easy to fix.

I still have the factory TM's for the 51, 53 and the 58 chassis'. They were well written and had a wonderful easy flow chart to follow for problems.