My "New" RCA
 

Picked this one up off eBay a couple weeks ago.

Very clean cabinet on this one, it was covered in Cigarette stink but cleaned up easily with some 409.

Now I have three of the four colors, needing only a black one to complete the set.

Variety Flavor Pack!
 

Get that fourth flavor and they should display nicely! :D

Statistics
 

While cleaning the set I found a date stamped inside the antenna holder. I checked two other sets with antennas and they too have the date stamped inside, they (the antennas at least, were made within a two week period between 5/9 and 5/18 of 1956)

Here's a 1956 calendar: http://www.flicklives.com/Timeline/1956_cal.html

The grey set has the lowest serial number but the latest date on the antenna so either it's not original or the antenna date has nothing to do with the sets date of manufacture?

The other two were dated 6 days and 7931 sets apart.
Counting the weekend that is 4 working days between sets or 1982 sets made in 4 days.


I'm thinking this would be an interesting set to start a serial number database on, they are plentiful so there should be a lot of data.

Many of them don't have (original) antennas, I would have to look inside and see if there is a more reliable way to date them.

Whadda you think? Good idea?

Eric

Serial numbers
 

As somebody who works in a car factory (where much fuss is already made about Vehicle Identification Numbers, and their order) I can say that the serial numbers probably don't mean much in relation to date of manufacture.

For example... If the line is stocked for a red vehicle, I'll pull red cars from the bank of VINs, regardless of which has the lowest serial number. (We don't have a paint shop) Thus, a silver VIN car might sit around for weeks while we build red/black. Someday, somebody will restore the silver car and claim it was built before a red car with a higher VIN.... But they would be wrong.

I suspect it might have been the same on the TV line... Red one week, blue for two weeks, etc.

Good point Carmine, I still think it might be fun to compile a list and look for patterns though.

Also I don't know if the serials were consecutive for these sets or if they were used across the entire RCA line regardless of model.

The serials on these actually start with a B, (i.e. B9314669)
I seriously doubt they made 9 million of these sets but maybe they had made 9 million TV's total to that point, or maybe 9 million with the "B" prefix?

"A" Prefix
 

Check out this picture of a 721 serial number:
Starts with "A" and is very low.

I scored a red one not too long ago.

Hi Dave,
does it have a date and serial number?

Eric

I haven't checked it out yet. If it does, I'll post the info.

The serial on mine is: B1418981