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I only saw roundies in person TWICE in my life: both ocasions were on the collection of a friend of mine. Roundies are the RAREST OF THE RAREST of vintage TVs here, since brazilian television began in 1950, so roundies were on their last moments of production. Luckily, he began collecting TVs sometime around 1985, when people were still throwing those to the dump. He has some 15 roundies, which, for Latin American standards, is an EXTREMELY IMPRESSIVE amount. Probably the most rare of his roundies is the Philips ( picture below ). He is lucky enough to have TWO of those. This TV was made in Holland in 1949/1950, SPECIALLY for the brazilian market. Oddly enough, the controls are in Portuguese, but not on Brazilian Portuguese but in the Portuguese that is spoken on Portugal ( and television in Portugal only began in 1957 ). The guys at Eindhoven thougt that the language was just exactly the same... Anyway, the first time I visited his collection ( in 1998, and I NEVER forget that day, it was also the same day in which I met and took pictures and autographs with Mister David Prowse, a.k.a Lord Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy ), it was the most WILD experience in my life, a true TIME MACHINE - he put a "Three Stooges" episode to play in that Philips roundie ( the one episode in which they wreck a TV set they had to install to a friend ); oh man, I REALLY felt like it was 1950 again!
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