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Simple great find I made in a local ( brazilian ) auction site yesterday. It's a 1955/1956 TV-radio-phono combo made by Windsor ( despite the name, it was an 100% brazilian owned company ). Since it was a national enterprise, in a period in which Brazil was starting to become an industrial economy ( thanks to China we are going back, returning fast to our agricultural economy days ), the production numbers of such a company were extremely low, which makes sets like this very, very rare. Since it was an expensive purchase, I am buying this in association with a friend. Set is 700 kilometers away from us, and transportation will really be an issue. I ask you guys to wish me luck!

Best of luck,,,, interesting find.
Dan

Good Luck!

Looks like a grand old tuner in there. Good luck!

Thanks!

Very nice combo! Cant wait to hear more details.
-Tony

The tuner looks a lot liike an E.H. Scott 800B...This was obviously NOT a cheap set in its day...

How many bands does that tuner recieve? That tuner looks similar to an old German EMUD that I used to have. Does the tuner or t.v. still work or is it going to need work? BTW, great cabinet!! That cabinet looks like one of the special-order custom jobs that are sometimes (but not often) found here.
nice score.:thmbsp:


Dumont-First with the finest in television.:yes:

I talked to a fellow collector, who has A LOT MORE knowledge about those sets than I am, and he said that it is quite possible that this set is a custom job ( judging by the radio ). The seller didn't said the brand of the TV in his ad; it's because I have two newspapers ( one from 1955 and another one from 1956 ) and both have ads of Windsor table models EXACTLY like this one - so I concluded that this might be a Windsor combo. I will ask the seller if there's some brand name on the back cover - yes, it still have the intact back cover, I would not buy something like this without the cover, It cannot travel such a big distance without it and arrive with an intact CRT, can it?

I still don't know if anything on this set works - chances are that they are not, because most likely the seller would put this on his ad. Also, if the TV was in working condition, he would ask a very high price - something like more than a US$ 1,000 that's what an early/mid fifties working TV is worth here. In the rush to buy it, I didn't had time to ask about the working status of this set - just a few hours earlier, some deep-pockets guy seemed to be very interested on buying this; probably, if I were not looking at the auction when I did, I would end not even knowing this went for sale - I can say that the Force was with me!

Good luck! Going anywhere near the neighboring Ucayali Basin?

I'll sell you every set I've got for $200 each, the shipping will likely be more than the set but that would allow you a slick $600 per set. This of course is for a non working set. I'd have to have $350 for a working set.

If I could purcase a couple hundred sets I could retire in Brazil. I could lay back just fine on allmost a quarter of a million dollars. :yes:

1000 old tvs could make me a millionaire. This may be really worth thinking about.........:thmbsp:

Geez and I can't hardly give away an old set when I need to make room....:no:

Very nice-looking and interesting find, with some local historical interest attached. Well done, and good luck with shipping! :thmbsp:

I'm curious: are all old (1950s or so) TVs worth a lot in Brazil, or just locally-made ones or rarer ones like that? How about other audio gear, things like old tube radios? Would there be duties (official or otherwise) in importing such gear to Brazil? Depending on the answers to questions like these, Tubejunkie may be onto something here with the idea of a business...:scratch2:

That's a very nice set! The cabinet is amazing. :banana:

It really depends much on the TV. Sets from early to mid-fifties tend to be valuable, specially if they are in working order, but, if the set is from a local brand, well, than, really, the seller can ask a lot of money, working order or not - those local companies were really small, and production numbers were low. There are some 1950's sets that you can find more easily, like those from 1958/1959, specially Philips and General Electric. Predictas are more or less an easy find here, BUT they are REALLY VALUED - because solely on the unique design, that attracts more people than the usual vintage electronics enthusiasts crowd; but, the Brazilian Predicta is slightly different from the American version. 1940's and 1950's radios are extremelly commom here, it seems that there are millions of those, as well as 40's/50's radio-phono combos, I believe that there are many thousands of radio collectors; even 1930's radio sets appear more or less regularly, specially those made by Philips and Philco - Zeniths are very rare, and very valued, a nice-looking and working Zenith from the 30's can make a seller very happy. What is really rare, and can bring substantial amounts of money are horn-speaker radios from the 1920's.

IF the seller doesn't declare value, it might even enter the country without paying any taxes; eventual tax value may depend on the value declared on the object. As far as I know, only modern electronic are subject to mandatory taxation - things like tube technology fall into the categories of antiquity and collectables, and might even be free of taxation because of that.

Eric, according to the information gave by the seller, the cabinet style is "Louis XV" - so, this TV could be used in Versailles, if they had where to connect the plug...:D

A question:

If this thing is a custom job ( and it seems it is, as I've done a little investigation so far on this subject ), than there's no schematic of this unit, right ( if everything is interconnected in there ) ? That might make a restoration somewhat more difficult, isn't it?

Otherwise, everything else seems to be only good news about this combo. It came straight from the same house where it sat since it was new, and I've been told ( by the seller ) that they are a very careful family. In fact, since the seller claim that she is a friend of the family, I am thinking about asking for a way to make contact with that family to know more about the history of that set - maybe they might even have some old photo taken in the 50's with the set in their living room.

Arrived today, after a long trip, and luckily, everything is fine, it arrived intact. Really looks like a custom job, on the next hours I will remove the back cover to find out what is the brand of the TV - there's no name on the front, I was thinking it might be a Windsor because of the knobs, but now, I am not so sure.

A disaster happened!!!
 

The thing is VERY heavy, so, as I was going to move it around, so I could have space to work on the back cover, I decided to enlist the help of my brother. BIG MISTAKE. I thought that he was strong, since he regularly goes to the gym, and takes all those vitamins. "This is the right man to help me" I thought. I lifted it on the left, and he lifted it on the right. HE TREMBLED, HE COULDN'T STAND THE WEIGHT!!!! THE WHOLE THING WENT TO THE FLOOR, RIGHT OVER MY RIGHT FOOT!

I was mortified. There weren't injuries to my foot ( only a little persisting pain, it happened 8 hours ago ), but I instantly feared the worst, I feared that the CRT had broken. I lifted the whole thing in panic, but AMAZINGLY the CRT survived, and even the glass in front the CRT remained intact. Only the plastic mask surrounding the CRT was broken. I was very upset over that broken mask, but at the same time relieved that it wasn't the CRT that broke. It will be a pain in the neck to get another mask ( or, in the worst case scenario, to repair that broken one ).

This thing was, no doubt, a custom job. There's an american TV inside ( I looked inside ), that I couldn't identify the brand, and the radio is a brazilian radio. It's made of a noble and very heavy wood, "imbuia" ( I don't know the name of that wood in English ), so this thing will never get infested by termites. I was so, very lucky that I didn't ended with a crushed foot.

Below you can see pictures taken before and after the tragedy.

More pictures
 

I sent the broken mask to a guy very skilled in working with plastics. To do it I had to take the chassis out of the cabinet, and I can't find a single clue about the brand of the TV other than it is an American set because of the labels written in English. Any ideas about what TV this might be? The radio is a Windsor, I only discovered this by taking out the back cover of the radio part. That might explain why the TV uses the knobs of a Windsor TV set of that same period.

The CRT was rebuilt on October, 25, 1965. It uses the 21-Z-P4 CRT.