Show us your vintage B&W sets!

[AnalogDigit]

Originally Posted by jshorva65

To answer that question, I'm selling it because vintage tv is now more than a hobby. I used to work for a leading long-distance phone company which is now in the news for the worst accounting scandal in US history. Vintage electronics is my job now.

Some products and services we offer are:

1 - We buy, restore and sell vintage radio, tv, hi-fi and guitar amplifiers.

2 - We design and build tube guitar and hi-fi amplifiers.

3 - We restore vintage electronics for those collectors who already have the sets but lack the time or expertise to do their own restorations.

When I acquire an especially rare set (there were fewer Crosley 9-408's made than RCA 630TS's) I hold onto them for private display in my home.

One of my goals is to increase the number of surviving antique sets that are also working antique sets.

This has been something I've wanted to turn from a hobby into a career since I was 12 years old. The ultimate goal of my business is to bring America's consumer electronics industry back to its former glory in the same way as we all love to bring pictures bact to the screens of classic tv sets that have sat dormant for decades. I hope to market a 100% American-made tv set within 10 years. Please visit my Web site and have a lok around. The URL is http://home.earthlink.net/~amptechsys. Here's my AboutMe page on eBay, also http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/jshorva65/

Thank you for the reply.

John

John, I wish you luck in your goal. I think if this country started making consumer good that were high quality, we can beat anyone in the world.

[jshorva65]

Originally Posted by AnalogDigit

John, I wish you luck in your goal. I think if this country started making consumer good that were high quality, we can beat anyone in the world.

Thank you for the words of encouragement and for reminding me of some of the long-term goals I set back when Jan and I first ventured into bringing that childhood dream of mine closer to reality, goals that I still have but now realize will probably take longer to achieve than I had anticipated back then. I was really surprised when Jamie took up collecting Vintage TV sets herself, but inspiring first-time owners of Vintage TV sets toward becoming Collectors seems to be happening more often for me than I originally expected. Tomorrow, Jamie and I will be making a "road trip" to Pennsylvania to see the latest "scores" by a client who is now a friend and one of two part-time subcontract vendors I hope to eventually find myself in a position of offering full-time careers. All in due time, though. For now, Jamie and I will be taking that short road trip with my new Assistant Technician to visit my Cabinetry Expert to see the two Sylvania Halo-Lite sets he scored this week, a rare 50s Sylvania 21" tabletop Color set (an actual Sylvania set, as opposed to a licensed clone of an RCA color chassis), and some test gear and parts inventory he bought out from retired repairmen and engineers.

[miniman82]

Here's a crappy vid of my Philco 51-T1634, showing it's first pictures after recap. I found it on the side of the road, someone had thrown it out. Picture quality is better now, I added a composite input for video.
http://myweb.msoe.edu/williamstm/Philco_Tetris2.wmv

[jshorva65]

Originally Posted by miniman82

Here's a crappy vid of my Philco 51-T1634, showing it's first pictures after recap. I found it on the side of the road, someone had thrown it out. Picture quality is better now, I added a composite input for video.
http://myweb.msoe.edu/williamstm/Philco_Tetris2.wmv

Nice set! Here's a crummy cellphone-captured vid featuring a friend's Philco 50T1403 that I restored for him recently. I just scored a 50T1403 for my own collection this week and delegated its Restoration to my Technical Assistant while I'm busy tending to the planning of a "road trip" to score a truckload of Zenith color roundie sets and as much of the assorted parts and test gear offered by the seller of the Zenith sets as my budget and/or the capacity of the truck will permit. I'll post pics of my own Philco 50T1403 here when it's ready, and I'll post pics of the Zenith roundie sets in the Color thread after picking them up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYVYmUXHQis

Incidentally, the set that would have been my first Vintage TV was a Philco 50T1403. Since I was only about 12 years old and my parents considered my buying it at the garage sale where it was offered for $5 "too dangerous" I had to pass it up. Funny how things come full-circle. The 50T1403 that I just bought was from a contractor who noticed my Vintage TV collection while doing an estimate for some maintenance at my house and contacted me about a week later to let me know he had bought an old TV set to offer for sale to me. Totally unexpected, just like that first garage sale find more than 30 years ago.

[Rob]

John,

Sorry for you that the bean counters at the phone company got caught doing what they and bankers do best. A lot of people that trusted the system have been burned badly.

I wish you luck in your enterprise. It is great when you can turn something you love as a hobby into something you will also enjoy as a mechanism for buying groceries. Looks like the 721 will buy you a few groceries.

I have one of those 721TS's obtained from a mutual friend (I'll bet) who happens to also live in New York State, the Crosley looks awful familiar , and wouldn't think of parting with it. I'd like to restore it someday myself. I just have so many to do I don't know which one to tackle next and other matters keep me distracted of course. I don't buy any of these ever to resell however, just for the private collection. Someone's gonna get a nice complete collection someday.

Rob

[ChuckA]

Can't get much rounder than this set. A Stromberg-Carlson TC-10

Chuck

[vintagecollect]

Awesome set, Eric H. !!! , I have a panther for top of my TV, I always wanted one of those coool Clocks, must get. One of the best B/W sets I've seen.

[doug621ts]

My name is Doug Peel and i live in southern california, I want to post this message and attach photos of part of my tv collection. Hope to hear some feedback and meet some great collectors!

[doug621ts]

I will send two more photos shortly!

Doug P.

[doug621ts]

Here is my last photo, again I hope to meet some grest collectors and get some feedback!

Doug

[Saratoga48]

zenith with @PHONEVISION
http://www.chicagotelevision.com/pay.htm

[jshorva65]

Dear Rob,

Yes, this one set will pay most of the bills here for the month. I also received a phone call yesterday from someone in Oklahoma who will be paying to have his RCA 8-T-241 professionally packed, shipped to me, restored by me, re-packed and shipped back. Why? Because he has owned the set (in working order) for years until just recently when the tuner was damaged by a visiting grandchild. He removed the tuner and had it professionally rebuilt. He thinks he may have reinstalled it incorrectly since he reinstalled it himself and is not experienced with electronics. The set also was working with all of its original paper capacitors unreplaced when it worked. I plan to evaluate the condition of the set and either confirm or disprove the customer's suspicion that the paper capacitors may finally need replaced and then, if necessary, relace them. My own suspicion is that the rebuilt tuner, now properly aligned by the rebuilder, may be producing an IF for which the chassis is no longer properly aligned. Armed with sweep and marker generators and a frequency counter, I plan to do RF sweeps on each channel, verifying that the tuner is set up to produce the correct response curve, check the response curve of the IF amplifiers, and then likewise align the set's IF amplifiers back to factory specifications if my suspicions prove to be true.

Incidentally, I also kept my Crosley 9-408 for a second reason besides the fact that it is less common than the similar RCA 630TS. My Crosley set appears to have been kept in a climate-controlled environment for many years and cared for very well. Although both sets are complete and the finishes are almost equally nice on both the RCA 721TS and the Crosley 9-408, you'll notice that the Crosley's finish looks almost like it would have looked when it was new while the RCA's has dulled just slightly from age. The Crosley also works as well as it does and produces all the correct waveforms and response sweeps flawlessly without the need for replacement of even one of its original paper capacitors. The set is powered up weekly, always with a Variac, protected by a 2.5-amp fuse, displayed in a room that's climate-controlled between 65 and 85 degrees and never left unattended with power aqpplied. If any capacitor does eventually fail, I'll replace them all.

John

[Kamakiri]

And you guys guessed it, I'm the mutual friend!

You guys have more sets in common than you realize.

[Eric H]

John, I was stunned to see wat the 721 is going for!

about 5 years ago I sold a 721, 830 and another 48 RCA for $200
that's $200 for all three!!

Someone please shoot me now <LOL>


Eric

[Rob]

Chuck,

Are you the one that scored one of these N.I.B. recently? Totally awesome set!

I've got three Zenith Portholes now, a Raytheon 12" Porthole, and a Teletone 209 suitcase 7" porthole that also qualify as 'round'. I just scored my latest Zenith, a 12" with doors last weekend. These true portholes are soooo cool!

Here's a picture of the new one and the 16" I had before to it's left. Both have identical cabinets and identical patterned doors.

Rob