[drh4683]

There were 5 sales I went to today. Found three sets, all at the same house at 1915 Buckingham Ave in Westchester. Entered the house at the back door and first place was to the basement. I heard a TV playing and it was a '74 RCA mural TV (hotel set) had the built in AM FM radio. Same exact TV I had growing up, except this one is mint. Ours saw tons of use my brother and I beat it up over the years as kids. So it was nice to get another one in nice shape to see what ours used to look like.
Looked around and then saw a very interesting set with the doors open! Its a 1971 GE table color set! Even had its original factory cart. Never seen a table set with swing out doors. This set is like new. Just needed a good dusting. Ironically, this one appears to have never been serviced, just like the cheapy b/w set I picked up last week. Didnt expect to start finding GE TVs all of a sudden! These are as rare as the motorola's.
This set reminds me of a big portacolor. Its all plastic cabinet with some type of composite plastic swing open doors. Needs some work, but the CRT is bright so I have something to work with. My first GE tube type color set that is not a portacolor! Like any GE TV its a cheap set, but this must have been a "high end" cheap set since it has the gaudy cabinet, light up dials and light up buttons on the control panel. Pretty neat. Full of compactrons inside. Still yet to pull the back off though.

Went upstairs and the finds were not over yet. In the living room was this 1961 space command 400. The TV still worked, still hooked up to the antenna and still plugged in! The remote chassis was off, so the tubes didnt boil away. The TV still worked, and good! Its hard to believe a TV to still be "in use" for almost 50 years. Obvioulsy it saw little use, but the fact that it was still in the front room hooked up! Didnt see any other TVs upstairs. There must have been another set they used more frequently.

Heres some interesting facts though. The man that lived in this house (Edward Bratyanski) worked for Hotpoint Corp. (originally a chicago based appliance manufacturer) as a quality control inspector at the plant on the north side of chicago. There was a large b/w picture on the wall in the basement of his 25th anniversary of employment party held at the plant on February 2, 1960! So he started working for Hotpoint in 1935! His wife Mary recently passed. There was alot of hotpoint stuff in the house as well as GE. Im guessing the GE TV was some kind of deal or gift since he worked for hotpoint. Im amazed how one of these sets survived after all these years. It probably had some kind of senimental value, so it survived. Just so you know, Hotpoint was its own company until 1967. thats when GE bought them.