HOW did people AFFORD our treasures--when they were new?

[rca2000]

I recently got that SS flat-chassis Zenith set, as you all know. Well, the seller ALSO sent me a brochure he had for the set. In it is my set and a price it cost in 1973, maybe late 1972 $630.00 Today--that is OVER 3K!! That money today will get one a 70" 4K flat panel--that will NOT last ANYWHERE near as long as the 25DC56 sets.


I know things were made to last much longer in the old days--BUT just HOW did people afford them? I have 2 big screens myself--but they cost me NOTHING--both were trash finds I fixed. Otherwise--I could NOT afford much of any tv set.

How did people afford these sets then--unless people were MUCH better off then--than now? Was the economy in the 60's to mid-70's THAT much better than now??

[bgadow]

A lot of them were financed; from one of the TV shops I cleaned out I found a stack of papers from a local bank listing the names of customers who had financed their new Admiral TV's.

[maxhifi]

Easy... they didn't have a computer, or a cell phone, or a DVD player, or a VCR... the TV was the most high tech item in a house, and people could afford it because they weren't splitting their money in so many directions like now. Think computers in the 90s, how many of us paid $2000 for a Pentium based system.

[Jon A.]

There were more and better jobs too before the chinese and the koreans took almost all of our manufacturing from us.

[rca2000]

I only paid $300 for this dual-core computer 4 years ago. True...it was a rebuilt unit--but still--it is not a bad computer.

[DaveWM]

Not everybody had nice stuff like this. upper middle class professional or skilled labor. Agree with other comment, money was not split up everywhere (100$ plus per month cable bill as an example). Middle class folks had lower end stuff.
Also you only had ONE tv like this and maybe a cheap BW. And of course you kept it a long time. A McD's job was for kids after school and you would not have this tv on that kind of an entry level job. There was a time when you were expected to work up to nice stuff. And as mentioned there was the option to finance, which was not a bad thing since the set would actually last longer than the financing. The mind set was to pay a premium for a quality product. That mind set is fast becoming rare. When I got my 1st job (entry level accountant) I had a hand me down 19" BW that needed to be tuned with a pair of vice grips on the tuning shaft (and make sure you are not grounded when doing that). That was my main set for years. Frankly I think folks expect too much too soon.

oh I hope not to offend A) folks that work at McD's just saying it was a low wage income that would not support a nice set (and yes I did work fast food back in the day so I know of what I am speaking).

B) the use of upper and middle class is not to define the type of person but an income level as commonly used.

I recall as a kid only one or two families had a color tv on the block and this was in the late 60's, NOBODY had a color TV that I can remember in the early 60's, by the time the early 70's came around it was prob 50/50 and I am talking about adults with families, so it was the main entertainment for several people. So it really was something of a luxury item. I am trying to think of a comparable contemporary item, but not having much luck.

[andy]

...

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by andy

Growing up in the 80's in a nice middle class neighborhood, most of my neighbors had a 19-25" color TV in the living room plus a portable that may be color or B/W. None of my friends had a color TV in their room (even a B/W TV was unusual).

I grew up in the late '60s-'70s. Most of the TVs I had until the mid-'70s were trash finds or second-hand sets from relatives. My first set was a 1950s Capehart console; the next one, if I remember correctly, was a 1955 Emerson metal-cased b&w portable, the second color set I owned (after my Silvertone CTC15 clone) was a Silvertone (Toshiba made) 16", and so on. The first TV I bought new was a "Kenco" (house brand of the now-defunct Kennedy and Cohen retail chain) 12" b&w tube-type portable, in 1975. The first new color TV I owned was a Zenith L-1310C in 1979, followed three years later by a Zenith color portable with the then-new electronic varactor tuning system. I needed a new color TV at that time like I needed a hole in the head, but for some crazy reason I wanted a TV with electronic tuning, even though the first Zenith color set was working perfectly well.

[rca2000]

I had a tv in my bedroom at 12 years old !!....a 13" BW set.

Of course...it was one given to me, considered junk...but I managed to fix it--and then use it for a while. (A Zenith 12CB12 set. ) it was a REAL treat to me to have my own tv. NO cable--didn't even know what that was in 1980...

[orthophonic]

My parents bought their first color tv in 1975, it was a leftover 1974 top of
the line CCII model, The Montmarter (Spelling?), The list price was $895.00.
Because it was left over, it was marked down to $749.00. My dad made a down payment and paid some amount every two weeks until it was paid for.
The interesting thing is, he made the deal with the store owner and no paper
work about the payments was ever created, no time frame, no interest, no signature on anything, he
just made the payment in person every two weeks. They had the set until 1989 with only one repair, a tuner rebuild in 1985. In 1989 some capacitors
were failing and it was traded on a new Zenith console that didn't even come
close to picture quality of the old one.

There were only a couple of color sets in my neighborhood in the 60's, and
there were a few kids in school whose families had them, mostly early 60's RCA's or Zeniths. One well to do school chum's parents had a 1956 RCA color
set and they were still using it in the mid 80's, his mother thought the picture was better than modern sets she had seen. They might still have it
somewhere for all I know.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

I grew up in the late '60s-'70s. Most of the TVs I had until the mid-'70s were trash finds or second-hand sets from relatives. My first set was a 1950s Capehart console; the next one, if I remember correctly, was a 1955 Emerson metal-cased b&w portable, the second color set I owned (after my Silvertone CTC15 clone) was a Silvertone (Toshiba made) 16", and so on. The first TV I bought new was a "Kenco" (house brand of the now-defunct Kennedy and Cohen retail chain) 12" b&w tube-type portable, in 1975. The first new color TV I owned was a Zenith L-1310C in 1979, followed three years later by a Zenith color portable with the then-new electronic varactor tuning system. I needed a new color TV at that time like I needed a hole in the head, but for some crazy reason I wanted a TV with electronic tuning, even though the first Zenith color set was working perfectly well.

Hey, don't knock the Kenco B/W portable. IIRC, they were selling them for something like $38.00, as a leader.
Back then, I got a few of them as freebees, because the owners thought that they weren't worth repairing, as they were so inexpensive. There was always something simple wrong with them. They were made by Sampo and were similar to the small Admiral sets. The real nice ones sold for $40.00, two bucks more than new.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by dieseljeep

Hey, don't knock the Kenco B/W portable. IIRC, they were selling them for something like $38.00, as a leader.
Back then, I got a few of them as freebees, because the owners thought that they weren't worth repairing, as they were so inexpensive. There was always something simple wrong with them. They were made by Sampo and were similar to the small Admiral sets. The real nice ones sold for $40.00, two bucks more than new.

My Kenco portable lasted all of three years and worked quite well before something shorted out in it. I turned it on one afternoon and saw a wisp of smoke coming out of the ventilation slots in the back of the cabinet. I junked the set almost immediately after that and, the next day, bought a solid-state 12" Zenith b&w portable at Best Buy for $62. That set lasted 22 years and was still working amazingly well, bright picture and all, when I got rid of it in 2000. I'd have kept it, but I had just moved to my apartment a few months earlier and had no room for another TV, as I had brought two color sets with me from my former residence.

I hope whomever snagged that portable from the trash got a few more years of use out of it, as it was far from useless in its condition at the time. In fact, the only thing wrong with it was that the detent mechanism on the UHF tuner was jammed, freezing the tuner on one channel. If that set is still in use today, the broken detent wouldn't matter anymore since the set would have to be used with either an OTA converter box or a cable box, of course, which normally output to VHF channels 3 or 4.

BTW, I didn't know the Kenco portables sold so cheaply when they were new. I don't remember how much I paid for mine in the mid-'70s, although I seriously doubt it was more than $50 or so. (I didn't know at that time that these sets were leaders; if I paid $50 or more for mine, I'm sure I wasn't aware of that fact, or else the store I bought the set from wasn't aware of it either.)


I had the back off the set at one point and saw just how cheaply it was built. Every tube, including the horizontal output/damper tube (38- or 53HK7, IIRC), was mounted on the set's single large PC board. There was no metal chassis; the entire set, except for the tuners, speaker, volume and contrast controls, was on that board. First TV I ever saw with almost the whole thing on one board. Was this a glimpse of what was to come in later sets, before they all went solid-state?

My Zenith 12" solid-state b&w portable was all on one PC board as well, except of course for the tuners and controls. It probably made sense to build a solid-state set on one PC board, since these TVs run much cooler than the tube-powered ones did. In fact, the only transistors in a solid-state TV that heat up to any extent would be the horizontal output and, perhaps, the audio output. The rest of the set could and probably did run as cool as a cucumber. I don't remember my Zenith SS portable ever getting as warm as some of the old tube sets I've owned, and I used that set a lot.

Today's flat screens, 19" and smaller, run much, much cooler and draw less power than most if not all SS CRT sets, although I have read here that the very large flat screen sets do heat up quite a bit, and draw quite a bit of power to boot. Someone here on VK (miniman82 comes to mind) has or had a DLP or projection TV that draws something on the order of 500 watts, but that's par for the course for a projection set, at least the older ones. The newest DLP/projection sets, if they are still in production, are likely designed for much less current consumption, and could be Energy Star certified as well.

[ChrisW6ATV]

Originally Posted by rca2000

How did people afford these sets then--unless people were MUCH better off then--than now? Was the economy in the 60's to mid-70's THAT much better than now??

To some degree, YES. Without trying to get into politics here, most "average" jobs paid a whole lot more then, relative to the general cost of living, than they do now. I mean, things like car repair, store clerk, or, umm, TV repair .

But, a nice TV set was the "big family purchase for the year", or even after waiting two or three years, too.

Two other things made life then quite different from typical situations now: Housing cost a lot less then, again relative to the general cost of living, in most places, than it does now. And, people relatively rarely went to restaurants for dinner (much less any equivalent of Starbucks). Two years of NOT having $40-60 meals twice a month or more will pay for a really nice piece of furniture, today, and the same equivalent was true then.

[zeno]

I will speak for the 1970-1980 era before the price slide
began.
Abt 25% of our sales over $300 were financed through AVCO
or a credit union. Most didnt buy the flat chassis or remote,
usually the cheaper tube models. There was one color TV in
the living room, the old B&W in the den & maybe a 12" to
lug around the house. About half our sales were Nov-Dec &
were the family xmas present. A new TV was NOT taken lightly
even by the rich, it was a long thought out process.
Money used to go a long way also. A TV man could buy a
house $30K new Impala $5K BCBS family plan $60/mo.
All that & the wife didnt have to work. Things were made to
last & be repaired also. My sister asked me what kind of
washer to get abt 10 yrs ago. I told her a 20 year old Maytag.
She didnt & shes been through 2 washers, my early 80's
Maytag needed a $20 water valve in the same time.

Twas a different world that under 50's folks dont know.
IMHO we have advanced technically but slid back in almost all
other respects. As a functioning society we are standing in deep dog doot.

73 Zeno

[DaveWM]

zeno funny you should mention the washer...

My high priced front load whirlpool duet looks nice but does not clean, leaks and has mold.

I went the the local appliance dealer (real dealer not box store) and he suggested getting a "speed queen" top loader, mechanical timer and no computer, sounds good to me.