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To Steve and all,
I'm going to make a painfully long story out of this. Be warned!
So here's the update: both the good and the bad.
Howdy...Doody...the caper
As Sam Spade might have said, "The curvaceous Philco 50T1403 was pretty well packed - for shipping, that is." Double boxing helped it to survive UPS - which is never any mean feat. And the packing was bubble sheet so I didn't have all the styro peanut mess.
The bad: the end of the original Philco 12LP4 was bare - no socket, no base, and a nice little hole where the tipoff had been snapped. First, I cried a little. Then, I found the wired socket with an intact base still plugged in. It was nestled behind some packing material. The socket itself had the usual few wraps of some mummifed black vinyl tape but was otherwise intact. So, Sherlock put on his deerstalker hat and went to work. I was sure that it wasn't UPS' fault - this time - because I found the socket and base, intact, behind the packing material. You may recall that in the listing picture, the socket and base area appeared normal, intact. So, it was time to alert the seller and see what he had to say regarding the hidden damage.
Meanwhile, I ruminated. Could the damage have occured during its photo session? Could the packer have damaged it? Not likely. To break the tip off one would have had to go through that intact base. So, Watson, how did it become hidden damage?
Elementary: Most likely, whoever owned it, before the eBay seller, perhaps many years ago, had used his pliers to put the tube to air and make that backless babe safe for the kiddies. It may well have already had a loose base. Someone with more than average knowledge of CRT's found the base loose and just twirled it until the wires broke. Then, he had easy access to the tipoff. Pshhhhhhhhh h h h h h h h......
He then stuffed it all back together and taped it to cover his tracks - or for display purposes. By the time it reached the seller's photographer (X years later) the tape was dried out and nothing was really holding it on but some lucky friction arising from the tangle of broken wire inside the base.
As it proceeded to the packing department there must have been enough jostling for the base to fall off and the packer thought that the base was just some decoration and he could tuck it in before he put on the next layer of bubble. The seller reported that the packer noticed the socket/base situation but never reported it. That's their story - and I'm swallowin' it.
Now, the good stuff. One could treat this as a cold case or a hot case because there's one little additional tidbit of information. And I know that this is what all two of you have been waiting for. I removed the plastic safety glass mask to separate Howdy from the Doody. Turns out that Howdy is a very high quality copy on Epson Professional Paper. So, the Howdy was a relatively recent mod. Seems to me that the condition of the almost brittle vinyl tape must go back to a time before Epson had such a quality copy capability. Was the taper and the Howdy maker one and the same person? All I know is that there was no butler involved.
That's as elementary as I can make it my dear Watson,
It all became moot for me when I negotiated a $50 refund from the seller. So, I end up with a pretty good cabinet, a clean, rust-free chassis, a set of slightly used tubes, and most of the knobs. I can't complain - no mouse doody. I don't believe there was any intention to hide the damage and ebay is always a bit like a pull on a slot machine lever anyway.
Small bit of good news. Because the tube was allowed to go to air slowly, the phospor screen appears to be intact - no visible damage.
Save your duds, the South will rise again. For now - there's Scotty.
Roger
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