This would set the old tv world on FIRE!
 

I had a pre-dream last week(That is where you are kind of dreaming, but not yet fully asleep yet), where my Cousin terry called me, to tell me that there was an old buliding in New york, that someone had told him about. he is an artist, and an art teacher, and makes trips to NY occasionaly.

Anyhow, he told me an old building was being prepped for demolition, and someone came across a sealed-off room full of tv's, like a small warehouse. One of his theater friends was in there, getting some fixtures and such, and hapened upon the room. At first, the workers removing the fixtures thought to just bust the old tv's and such, in a little party, but then, he had remembered that Terry had spoken of a Nephew(me), who likes old tv,radios, and such. So, he called Terry, and Terry called me. he said his friend said that the building had been an RCA/GE distributor, speciallizing in color tv repair, till around 1960, and the room had been sealed off since then. His friend said there were at least 20 or more floor model tv's in there, along with a bunch of "boxes in the corner." Terry told me that, in four days, the wrecking ball was comng, and everything I wanted would have to be out by then.

SO,thinking there might be something good there, I got a plane ticket, and went to NY, near the old "radio district", where the building was. I went into the room where the tv's were, not quite knowing what to expect.

Lined up against the walls were(4) Ct-100's, Pristine, with good crt's, (2) model 5 rca color sets, also with good crt's, (2) 21-ct-55s, several trk-5's 9's and 12', (2) ctc-5', a ctc4, (3) ctc-7's,, a couple of westinghouse 15" color sets, a westinghouse 22" rect color, a couple of Motorola color sets, 19" and even a COUPLE of prewar hm-225(IIRC) ge sets, along with a lot of 50's model BW sets, and several 630-type and a couple of rca 621ts's. There was even a Zenith prototype color from 1953, or whenever, like the one on this site, and a CBS mechanical color set, from 1951.ALL of them, of course, were in PRISTINE condition, with good crt's.

And the "boxes in the corner"-- they were CRT'S-- (8) 15gp22's, ALL unopened, (and later checked perfect), and two 21axp22's , and 2 21cyp22's, all perfect. In front of these, were four used crt's- two more 15gp22's, and 2 21cyp22's-- of course these were also perfect. there were also some more common BW crt's, like 21" rect, and some 12lp4's, etc.

Behind these were a number of chassis from tv's from the 50's, including several ct-100 types, and even a couple of trk chassis., along with a couple of 12ap4 crt's.

Needless, to say, this was a PLATINUM, (not gold)mine! I got hold of a friend of mine, and a fellow collector, and then, arranged for a rental of a truck to bring it all home. Word got out, through this site, and several of the tv guys around the country, came together, and made me an offer on the whole lot, (minus a ctc5, ctc-7, and one 621ts, for myself), for $200K, which I gladly accepted!

Then I started coughing, from Sinus, and woke up. If only It would happen in reality. A find like that would be the FIND OF THE MILINEUM, for certain.

12lp4
 

I've got a 12LP4A and the filament reads about 1.5V (low but still useful) and it's packed (see Packing and shipping) if anybody actually needs it (I don't have the chassis anymore)...It's a GE not the DuMont (it replaced one I'm told in a Stromberg Carlson set).

I was searching through the old stuff, and I had to revive this one. I dream of old TV's all the time!
I frequently dream that I am watching a TV and then I look behind it and see it isn't plugged in.
I also frequently dream of my first TV, a mid-60's Zenith b&w portable. I really liked that TV. I wish I still had it. My Grandfather gave it to me back in '85 when he made the switch to color. I am probably the only person of my generation who grew up watching B&W. I used to stay up late on Saturday nights watching reruns of the Twilight Zone and the Outer Limits on it.
One time I had a dream that a Zenith color hybrid I had exploded, a week later the flyback started arcing all over the place.
One time I had a dream that this beautiful woman approached me, she had unusually bright blue eyes, she offered to tell me anything I wanted to know, I asked her to tell me how to fix this Setchell-Carlson I was working on (a set that I really do have and fixed several months later). She told me I shouldn't waste such an opportunity on something I was eventually going to figure out by myself anyway. I asked her to explain to me how build a time machine. She told me a bunch of stuff that made no sense to me.
One time I even had a dream that I was at a thrift store that I frequent, I usually find a nice old TV there a few times a year. In the dream, I found a back lot that wasn't there before, it was full of old TV's. The cabinets were all rather damaged, as they had been sitting outside for many years. Most of them were not TVs that actually exist, mostly they all looked like 1920's radio cabinets with 3" CRT's in them. I wandered back to the front of the store to say I wanted to buy all the TVs. But after I got to the front I couldn't find my way back to the TV's again. But I did find two portacolors up front that I bought.
When I woke up, I decided to go directly to that store to see if they had the TV's. They actually had two tube TV's a 59 b&w Magnavox console, and that 68 Panasonic color set.
And don't even get me started on old car dreams. The best one I ever had was a '63 Pontiac Catalina with a 421 from a Bonneville, three deuces, and a factory 4 speed. It had original yellow paint, rather faded, but no rust or major body damage, just a little on the right front where part of the grille was broken.
Once I had a dream I had a '59 T-bird that had been made into a Ranchero with a 392 Hemi engine and a retractable hardtop. It had a TV in the dash.
Another TV dream I just remembered, I was driving a 1978 El-Camino that used to be my uncle's. It was white, 350 engine, TH 350 trans. , it had an AM/FM radio that came out of a '77 Caprice he junked. I pulled up to this big werehouse, an all metal buliding, and I walked inside, it was full from floor to ceiling of old TVs, mostly late 40's early 50's stuff, alot of Zenith portholes.
This makes me remember another TV dream I had just last week. It had that Caprice in it. He still had the Caprice, but it was filled with old TVs and VCRs. Mostly 70s B&W ss portables, one portacolor, and several of those early top-loader VCR's, even two Betas, and a Radar-Range in the back seat.

Last night I had a dream where I was in some business or building and me and this other guy were going from area to area in it, but to do that you had to go thru these turnstiles - except instead of walking thru the turnstiles there were two of them up high and you had to hold your arms up and run them thru instead?! And something about if you went thru the wrong one it might chop your arms off or something. Make sense of this one!

My recent TV dream I had a few weeks ago... Several of my oldest TVs were outside being thrown out in the garbage, along with my grandfather's Olympic Stereo console from 1960 or so.

I woke up and thought it happened for real, only to look over and see that the TVs are still there on their shelves :)


Oh yeah, just rememberd, I did have one last night as well. What was going on didn't make any sense, but a few of my TVs were displaying commercials from the 70s, but I remember my dad asking me "How many TVs do you have in your room right now?"..."21" and then I woke up.

I've dreamt of TVs before, but it's almost always pretty weird. The last one I remember I was fighting off some contestant off Australian Idol with a pointy stick who was trying to stop me from taking a CT-100 out of a dumpster. Especially weird considering Australia didn't get color until 1975, so there's absolutely no reason for a CT-100 to be here.

No reason for this set to be in Australia either:

http://www.tvhistory.tv/1948-Andrea-CVK12.jpg

Someone emailed me last year from Australia who had come across a set like that one, wanting to know when it was made.

So, a CT-100 could be there.

Judging from some of the articles in various issues of Radio, Television & Hobbies (later Electronics Australia) on the difficulties in servicing and modifying foreign TV sets people did bring sets into Australia with their personal effects when they immigrated. From memory all that was usually required with mono sets was the installation of a locally made tuner and a step down transformer for American sets. Usually there was enough adjustment available to get a set intended for 60Hz Vsync to lock onto our 50Hz signal. The problems came later when someone needed to replace a valve that wasn't available.

While it is not impossible that there is a CT-100 out here somewhere I've got my doubts. As far as I know we never considered the NTSC system here. All the early color sets that I saw in magazine articles from before the introduction of color were sets imported from the UK.

Some of the earliest color sets sold here were UK Decca sets fitted with a locally supplied tuner. These were hybrid sets with valves in the horizontal output stage. They were the only color sets I know of that were sold here with valves in them.

I have seen one imported Rank Arena set from the UK that was originally all solid state, but gained a couple of valves after someone fitted a VHF tuner salvaged from a much older mono set.

I see imported UK sets here from time to time, usually more recent ones that were used as-is with a VCR connected to the AV input serving as the tuner.

I've seen a few Japanese sets here that were probably brought over by someone who wasn't aware of the differences. To most people they are totally useless here (100V, NTSC vs. 240V, PAL, and the TV bands are different). I bought one purely so I could run a Japanese Nintendo Famicon that only has an RF output. I've got several modified Famicons with AV outputs, but I wanted to keep one original and run it on a matching TV. So I bought a little 14" Hitachi in a red case that almost perfectly matches the Famicon case color.

Strangely though in all my years spent at junk auctions, markets, and picking stuff up of the street I have only ever seen 1 American set. It was at a junk auction about 15 years ago. It's been a long time, but I'm pretty sure it was a Portacolor. Unfortunately I didn't buy it. Back then any dead color set brought at least $50. One of the regulars at the time probably bought it, and I dare saw he got a quite a suprise when he took the back off.

There is one known CT-100 in England, one in France, one in Germany, and two in Italy, but so far, none are known to be in Australia.

My mother had roped me into going to a dinner party. I had to go down a bunch of back roads to get there & I was really upset because about having to mingle with all these people I didn’t know. After suffering for awhile I walk around to the back of the house & find they are holding a yard sale at the same time. And, yes, they have an old TV! It’s an early 60s 21” BW console with a safety glass & ebony cabinet. The set is on & showing a snowy picture. I tried to make out the brand name but it was cryptic. I determined that it was foreign. Then there was another set (or perhaps the first one morphed into it) and this one had TWO screens-no, wait-THREE screens! It was arranged into a sort of hearth, and in the dream I had seen this model before but not in operating condition. This one worked. The upper screen was about 5’ off the ground & was about 21” but very short; the screen below it was smaller & the one to the right of that was smaller yet. I think they were all just showing snow. It later came to pass that this wasn’t a TV at all; that the screens were some sort of special material and that real people were inside acting. Somehow the screens made it look like they were on TV. Then it was back to the dinner party, to socialize with folks I didn’t care to be with…

Explanation for the above? My mother called yesterday wanting me to go out New Year’s Eve. The back roads likely came from daydreaming about driving the 8 hours down to Dwight’s parents farm to rescue those TV’s! As for the multiple screens, I was just reading, in an old magazine about a prototype RCA had built (c.1970) with a 25” color screen plus 4 small BW screens. Then I was reading here on the forums the explanation of how modern projection TV screens work. Throw together all that, along with a nice, big bowl of oatmeal just before bedtime, & voila! Another crazy TV dream!

Sounds familiar except for me it is NOT a dream...