People on ebay expecting too much?
 

In case you haven't noticed there is a back log of early to mid 60's sets on Ebay. Somehow these sellers are expecting too much for their sets. Espeically since this is a very select field of collecting.

Most people just look at the sets and say Oh. I don't see this segment of collecting becoming mainstream anytime soon.

50s sets don't sell for much, so even giving away 60s sets is difficult.

They might be coming here to check out what is most popular. The non-collecting public, if they want an old TV at all, isn't going to buy as they certainly wouldn't want something that needs restoration and/or cuts the corners off the picture.

How true. Non-technical people would rather have a flat screen TV than an old '50s set that may work for the moment, but will need to be serviced (read restored) eventually. People who know nothing about television aren't going to buy these old sets either. Today, people buy a flat screen expecting to be able to simply plug it in, connect the antenna or cable, and enjoy it, even with oversaturated colors and the like (the result of the sets having been reset to factory defaults and left at those settings).

Enjoy it for AWHILE...and it WILL need serviced...Working on an 011 flat panel now--that was loosing the BL--feared bad CCFL tubes...but looks like just bad connections to the balancer board.

For what it's worth at least our group keeps these living pieces of history alive. I grew up in the black and white era and for me color tv was almost magical back then. I guess that accounts for my interest in restoring these beauties.

I still think the early story of how color tv came about would make a great show from Ken Burns, afterall that's the media he works with

...

Yeah, try getting a good isolation transformer for a decent price. Then there's the shipping cost on top, holy crap.

eBay has gone to the dogs in the last few years.

Many of the sellers make your local Antique Mall seem like a Dollar Store by comparison.

I find more good deals on Craigslist these days but even there a lot of people have unrealistic expectations.

I place a lot of the blame on those stupid "reality" shows like Storage Wars, etc for giving people a false view that anything old is worth big money.

Their marketing strategy has evolved to "Sell for more, less often". An idealized way to make money with minimum effort, possibly driven by the social media generation, because they have so little time left in their day after gaming, texting and tweeting with everyone. Heaven forbid if one needs to get up each morning, go to work, or babysit a real store front. :rolleyes:

I see alot of stuff on eBay fairly cheap and have bought a few sets on there for around $75 to $200 plus I paid for the shipping on a few roundie consoles... For the most part sets on there I see around that mark.. Though there are a few loonies on there that think sets are worth in the higher hundreds or in the thousands..

Suppose it's possible that a few resellers pay too much for their inventory, and so they hold out. Maybe it's harder to research the going rate of vintage TV's than we realize. Who know what they're thinking, mostly wishful, I suspect :D

I think part of the problem is what we would consider to be very collectable doesn't have that same value to the general public. I think some older people hung on to sets because they had sentimental value.

another big problem with ebay is that no one seems to mention how high the % is that is due to ebay after selling an item, the more you get for the item the more ebay takes , like the government, the more you make the more the government takes....

One thing that feeds the problem is the desirable sets that get bid up to the moon, and the moderately desirable ones that get dummies to bid them up more than their worth...Then dummies think they can get some record high price for their 'similar' set every day.

The first tube (a Zenith hybrid actually) color set I bought was off ebay, and I got in a bidding war with someone over it. I paid 150$ for it in working condition. I feel a bit dumb about it now, but we were between homes in Florida (where tube TVs are scarce especially color sets) and here in Wisconsin, any tube color sets near either home were not showing up on the bay, and I wanted one REAL bad....I can imagine some loons saw that and thought their mid 70's Asian trash was worth big money.

In Florida, tube indeed is VERY scarce.. Last time I saw a Hybrid tube set from the early 1970s was in the late 1980s, and it was a table top I think 25 inch or around there in a steal cabinet, that I found off the side of the road, I had help lugging it home being only 11 years old, I remember the set being pretty big.. Hooked the Atari 7800 up to it, and a picture never came on, was only sound, and it went right back into the garbage.. I use to see some Console tube sets around the late 1980s and early 90s in junk piles and in thrift shops.. But now I've been lucky lately with Craigslist with color roundies, and most of them were transplants from other states.. I see more smaller B/W sets from the late 40s, early 50s, on my local Craigslist more than anything else, and combo units.. Florida Doesn't have basements, so I assume that's one reason why they are scarce..

Gone mad in the UK too.....
 

I'm currently watching a First Gen. colour set from 1967, a Thorn 2000. It allegedly was the first fully transistorised (No Tubes--how Boring) colour set in the world....

2 days left, and its up to £300. (Prob about $400)

Absolute lunacy IMHO.

First gen (We started colour broadcasts in 1967 ish), dual-standard (405/625 line VHF/UHF) sets were generally valve/hybrid sets, and again horrendous prices....

Ive been after a Philips G6 hybrid colour set ('67-69 vintage) for some years, preferably the later single-standard 22" one.

A year or two back some Muppet offered me one that had stood in a damp garage for 10 years, under a pile of other sets--and with a faulty flyback, and unknown CRT condition for £450--I told him where to go!

So--say, $200 for one of your nice roundies would be heaven on earth, but here it ain't ever gonna happen!:tears:

Part of the problem is people looking at ebay and seeing what people are asking for sets. vintageaudiophilia posts on ebay for a living and asks ungodly amounts for his sets. non collectors see this and say, I have a set that looks like that it must be worth hundreds too. Now you have lots of people that list their set for amounts the they will never sell them for. :thumbsdn:

That user sells sets fully restored... If he had a set in particular that I was looking for, I'd probably buy it at around $400 - $500.. In fact he had an Emerson that I was looking for, for around that price, but I didn't see it until it was already sold.. But he also has stuff for well over $1000 - 2k too.. I don't know why some of them are way up there and some are decent range.. Maybe because some of them are very rare?

The CTC 9 that I sold on Ebay went for $600 but it was fully restored and ended up going to a museum in California. I put a lot of work into that set, in fact my avatar was taken from that set.

Time is a very strange thing to me. Back in the late 80s being fresh out of the army I was strong enough to take on a job delivering furniture. I remember fairly regularly seeing late 1950s black and white sets in people's home as their only set. Usually they were older people who found more to do in life than lay on the couch and watch TV.

Now, some years later we are talking about old color TVs being placed in museums! Wow! I used to pick them up in local shops for $10-$20 whenever I needed a set for my room or to keep use low on my 56 Philco that I still have unrestored & working. This would be in the earlier 80s. I was a bit of a TV & radio buff most of my life. I took electronics in high school (later in college) & I knew a few families who still were using "roundies" daily and since they were getting some age on them by that time they would go out and a few times people had me come over to their place and try to revive them. At that time I was more of a tube changer than anything, but quite often that was the problem and I got to make a few bucks.

When I moved out of my parents house, Dad made sure that any sets I had compiled in the basement went with me, or to the dump. I remember tossing an old dresser that was packed with early color yokes, flybacks, and a big black box that I had yanked out of a remote control roundie. I forget if it was Zenith or RCA now, but I remember that it worked and then got finicky before something else happened to the set and I parted it. Too bad I wasn't more than a tube changer because I parted a lot of sets that I'm positive that there wasn't much wrong with.

And now I'm telling these stories as people evidently are marveling at the examples of life in primitive times with electronics that actually took physical movement to make selections and adjustments. We really had it rough! If I can only learn to type with my thumbs I might seem, or feel, like I've caught up with the world....

Sorry no he dont. I just looked at 10 of his over priced sets and none were restored.