Any guesses on this TV?
 

HI - I'm hoping someone can make a guess on an old TV. I don't have a picture, model # or manufacturer. BUT - I can tell you this much. In the middle 1960's when I was a kid, a local discount store had a pallet of small BW TV sets inside the front of the store. They were priced at $66. I would have loved to have one but that was a lot of money for a kid back then and I didn't have it.

I've collected a number of smaller sets from the early 60's era - a few Sony's, a Singer, a JVC, even a Symphonic. (To me an old TV isn't a real TV if it doesn't have click VHF tuning.)

I really doubt that the $66 TV at the discount store was any of those brands I just mentioned, based on the prices I've seen that they were sold for. There must have been some cheap (probably Japanese at the time) TV's that were sold back then - does anyone have any guesses what kind those might have been at the discount store? Thanks!

:worthless:

My guess its a GE 12 inch B&W. Should be a bunch of Compactrons inside.

This thread is worthless if you don't actually read my post.
If I had pics I could just look at them, couldn't I? I more or less explained why I don't have any.
I was hoping that someone would recall possibly some of the small minor-brand Japanese TV makers of the era who might have sold such TVs then - as I have no recollection from 55-60 years ago what the TV might have been.

It's probably one of the early Japanese offerings. The OP didn't mention the screen size. Many were Sharp, Midland and a few similar lower-end makes sold as close-outs.

Thanks very much. I'll see what I can find for cheap GE and Midland TV's from back then. (Based on their transistor radios I wonder if Sharp would have been a cheap brand?) I'm not sure if the TV was as big as 12" but I suspect anything really small would have also been more expensive than $66l
Maybe I can also search newspaper archives for some of that store's ads of the day, and find it listed in their advertising pages.
They sold those sets for a while but I never made it halfway to the $66. The fact that the cartons where stacked on a pallet right inside the front of the store suggests to me that they were some sort of special deal or closeout.

Back in the 60's we had a store called Kennedy and Cohen. They sold a 12 inch set made by Bohsei for 39 dollars if you bought a major appliance, otherwise, they sold for 69 dollars. GE and Admiral also sold 9 inch sets for 69 dollars.

K&C was a Florida-based concern that conjured up the name from two of the most common names in Florida at the time! It was the original bate and switch operation at the time. They also had a store in Milwaukee. Heavy advertising!
Actually, the Bohsei set was a rebadged AOC, made by Admiral in Taiwan.

The only Asian sets I ever saw in the 60's, where I was (Charleston), were color Sonys . And they were expensive. But the small GE B&W sets were plentiful. And they were cheap. They had a flimsy plastic cabinet, that, if you dropped it, it was finished. Haven't seen one since the 70's.

Sounds like a 9 inch tube based set. I'd go with Admiral, just going by the date and the price.
There wasn't a big flood of really cheap (sub $80) sets coming from japan till later on in the 60's, 1968 or so. They were around but not as many as later. Or at least this is what I've found from my research.

What did it look like?
Color of cabinet?
Controls , on the side, on the front right, controls on the bottom below the screen?
Name of discount store?

The more accurate you can describe it the more we can ID it. I've got an ongoing archive of pics of close to every mid 60's portable ever made and I likely have pictures of it.

This is the 1965 - 66 Admiral 9" that was in that price range

https://i.postimg.cc/JhbNGHN0/2023-08-05-15-52-58.jpg

I remembered the Bohsei built sets were badged "Kenco", for the store name. Also saw the same sets labeled "Broadmoor".

Does it have continuously variable tuning for the UHF or is it click-stop? Click stop didn't come out till the 70's.

In addition to newspapers if you can find a paper Sam's archive search about 3 years in either direction of the date you think you saw it...If it sold in reasonable quantity in the US there's probably a Sam's for it.

If I'm not mistaken the Sony chromatron and the Trinitron came out in the US in 1969, if you say those you're lucky if you say anything else earlier and it was a Sony it would change the history I know and I'd be interested to know the model.

It was July of '68:
https://www.earlytelevision.org/sony_chromatron.html
Only the wealthy had them, doctors, lawyers, politicians.

Rspree, why don't you just take some pictures and post them here? This forum thrives on pictures.

Hi kf4rca, From this sentence of the original post, I do not think rspree ever had the TV in question, so I don't think he has anything to take pics of?

..

There were a few discount stores up in NY like Korvettes, Caldor, I think Korvettes
had their own house brand XAM, they made a 10" & 12" B&W set that was always
on sale for $69. or less, and they sold lots of them, then 5 years later they were
all out with the trash.... Simple fixes and they made good pictures, I had a few...

..

I got a freebee Kenco 12" B/W that was made by Sampo.
K&C also so a 19" color set that was a putrid green color, appeared to be made by Admiral, that they sold for $158. A customer looked at it and the salesman tried switching him to a more expensive model. The buyer said, "it's good enough for my workshop". :D

Oops! Sorry, me bad. Senior moment or brain fart or whatever.
Do you remember the suitcase portables? They were made by everybody, Westinghouse, Admiral, Philco, RCA, Sears Silvertone, etc.
They had 19 inch 110 degree CRTs and, as I recall, weighed about 50 lbs. All metal cabinet. The RCA one even had a power transformer in it!
The Westinghouse one was the first one, I remember, to have the component designations printed on the circuit board. AND, they even matched the SAM's designations on the schematic.
Haven't seen one in a long time.