It looks like Philco (whose sales had been falling across the board and did not have long to live as far as TV manufacturing is concerned) had a bunch of roundie sets they had to clear out of inventory.

Some of the oldest ads for rectangular color TVs I've seen were from Philco. Sadly, I lost an issue of Life magazine I had a many years ago. The ad was from late 1964 or early 1965, IIRC, and there were ads for many other color TV sets - all roundies.

The ad went: "so you tole your barber you weren't getting color TV until the made the picture bigger. Better get a new excuse, or a new Philco".

I believe Philco may have had the first bonded-tube "25 inch" (later 23V) rectangular color CRT (with only the 22EP22 and 23EGP22 [21V] before it).

The interesting thing to me is that this tube has the greenish face of all-sulfide phosphors. This would say the tubes really were being taken out of old overstock, since everyone had gone to rare-earth red (giving a more neutral-color screen when off), even for roundies, by 1968 [or was someone still running a round tube line with sulfide phosphors?]. So, this set may have had a 26kV chassis, but it did not have as bright a picture as the "$800" set.

Anybody remember when Ford threw in the towel & sold Philco ?

Sandy, I think it was '75 that Ford sold the consumer electronics line to GTE. They kept the car radio/industrial line and renamed it Aeroneutronics-Ford; they sold the major appliance line later in the 70s.

Philco-Ford started making their own color crts later in the 60s. Maybe they built too many round tubes? Or just found that they could offer them real cheap? I have a used Philco 21" tube in the attic (is either gassy or has a short-I need to hook it up to a better crt tester) and it is rare earth. Zenith later bought the Philco crt plant. Philco Don Lindsley can likely offer further insight.

The Philco ad is great-whimsical, poking fun at the high cost of color tv and how they could sell you a full-size set for the price of most small ones. Plays off those ads GE ran with a little kid carrying a Portacolor. (off topic, Philco sold a badge-engineered Portacolor. I've only seen them in Sams)

The last roundie covered in Sams is a Magnavox in 1970. Has a series string chassis, IIRC. You wouldn't think of Magnavox as being at the cheap end of the market. I think the other late roundies were all store brands (Airline, Truetone, etc) as I think Philco had already stopped roundie production by then.

I have a Truetone roundie... the Sams folder for it is dated 1968. The chassis is nothing more than a CTC15 clone.

Yes, I know this topic was last updated in October 2009, but I found a Sams Photofact manual while cleaning my garage today, and there is a Wards Airline round-CRT color TV right on the cover. The TV is model GMW-17249A, and the Sams is from October 1969, number 1061. The TV chassis looks like a CTC-16 or CTC-16X clone, all tubes except for the UHF tuner's oscillator.

Interesting, I'll have to try ordering a few... I'll check FEDLOG, and see if it's still around.