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Since the DTV transition, I've gotten lots of 5"/9"/12" B&W sets from the late '60's on up.
In my area, channels 24 and 30 turned off their analog signal before channel 11. About a week before channel 11 was to switch, an older lady called to say that she could no longer receive channels 24 and 30 on her kitchen TV and she insisted that I look at her TV. When I arrived, I found an early '80's RCA 12" B&W set and I explained to her that nothing was wrong with her TV. I went on to explain that channel 11 would be going digital in one week and she would then lose all reception on that TV, unless she connected it to a DTV converter box. Despite all the long running PSA's concerning DTV, this lady had no clue what it meant. I explained how she could get a DTV converter for little cost; but, she was not interested. She said she couldn't justify spending any money to make an old B&W TV watchable and she told me to take the set home with me when I left. Had I not taken that set, it would have likely gone in the trash can. Outside of a few collectors, no one wants these types of B&W sets and people don't think twice about tossing them.
I have a friend, who re-sells things, and he's always going to yard sales. To make it simple, I told him to pick up any TV with a knob tuner if it was priced reasonable. So far, he's gotten me several 12" B&W sets and a few '70's/'80's color TV.
In a few years, these later B&W sets will probably be very hard to find. It's like back in the early '90's, I had no problem finding color roundies, older B&W consoles, or any other TV from the tube era. The early '90's was an era when the last round of tube TV's were being retired for solid state sets and people were real quick to throw them out or give them to people who wanted them. Back then, I had no desire to collect TV's. My main interest was to fix and resell TV's in order to buy antique radios.
Fast forward a few years and the tube sets became harder to find; but, solid state sets from the '70's and '80's started turning up more. Again, people were replacing these sets with newer TV's.
Now, it's somewhat rare around here to see a TV older than the mid '90's.
There is still stuff to be discovered; but, the bulk of the older stuff has already been discarded or given away.
In 50 years, there will probably be collectors getting excited because they found a 19" Sanyo LCD TV on the side of the road. If most of us found such a set today, we'd probably leave it at the side of the road.
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