If this set's former owner got 24 years of good service from that CRT (and it still makes a good picture today), it
must have been a good tube.
When you consider most tubes are getting dim after ten years (some modern ones get too weak to watch after only three to five years), if a tube is double that age, and then some, and still has a good picture, good brightness and all, it is excellent--almost unbelievable. I would be tempted to think your CM console wasn't even used that much, or perhaps very rarely, after the new CRT was installed.
Too bad the TV program
That's Incredible! isn't around anymore. If it were, I'd suggest you try to get your CM on it. As I said above, 24 good years from a color CRT is darned nearly incredible. The only thing I can figure is that the CRT in your set was made by RCA or some other manufacturer from TV's early days, as the tube seems to be every bit like the Energizer battery--it keeps going and going and going . . .
BTW, sorry to hear that one leg broke off the console while you were offloading it from your truck. (Shouldn't be too much of a job reattaching it, although you will have the heck of a time putting the cabinet in a position such that you can do it; seems to me you may have to take the chassis out, do something with the control hutch on top . . . Even at that, the cabinet will be heavy enough that you'll need plenty of help to get it on its back.)
The idea of putting wheels on the cabinet is good--I never heard of that being done with a console that big. If you do that, however, just make sure the set doesn't go rolling around in your living room or basement, wherever you plan to put it, every time you so much as nudge the cabinet. When/if it does, believe me, you'll know it--it will sound like a freight train rumbling through the house or worse.
