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I'm still friends with a guy who sells stuff at a roadside yard sale and he can still sell old TV's; but, they don't bring much. When I first met him in the early 2000's, he had an actual store that he opened every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. He'd come over on Wednesday and pick up several TV's for Thursday and he'd usually sell every one of them on Thursday. He'd come by when he closed up and get more for Friday and the process would repeat itself. Back then, it wasn't this $10-$20 BS, either. He usually had people waiting on him to show up with TV's and he often didn't even have to take them inside the store. Generally, 12"-19" B&W's were in the $15-$25 range (those were the cheap TV's back then). 19" color TV's were in the $50-$75 range. 23"/25" consoles were in the $75-$125 range and I remember getting as much as $175 for a 26" portable. Once, the local TV shop gave me a 36" Toshiba console with a dead red gun in the CRT. Otherwise, the set worked. My friend came over, saw it playing, and asked what I was going to do with it. I told him that the CRT was bad and that I was going to scrap it. He said that someone would buy it like it was; so, we loaded it on his truck and he sold it the next morning for $100. The people who bought it thought it looked great and he said that people were almost fighting over it.
Things have been getting worse since around 2005 and now, he's doing good to get $25 for any CRT color TV. In fact, I'm now to the point of not bringing any TV's home that don't interest me. As far as resell, it's not worth me dragging something home, taking the time and money to fix it, advertise it for $20, and have it sit here for months before it sells.
From talking to other people who fix TV's, they are telling me that people are getting picky about what flatscreen they'll buy. If it has a few years on it, they don't want it. As for me, I'm not too willing to fix and resell flatscreens due to their fragile nature and due to them not being as reliable. I don't want to sell one and have it come back in a week because they bumped up against the screen and now it doesn't work due to a broken panel.
The problem with selling used TV's is that the market is over saturated with old CRT TV's and why would they want to pay me $20 for something they likely already have or can get off the street for free? Also, owning an old TV would be too embarrassing and flatscreens have come down enough in price that most anyone can afford one (Even if it's a $9.99/week "rent-a-center" TV).
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