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Everyone I knew in that era was middle-class. Most had a 25" color console; the only person I knew with just one bw set was my grandfather who could well afford color but was cheap. (He eventually upgraded to a 15" GE color set in the early 80s.) One aunt/uncle had a pair of 19" Sylvania Supersets instead of one console.
About 1980 another aunt/uncle were remodeling and they had an early 60s GE bw portable that they gave us for Christmas. This was put in my sisters room; a few years later someone gave me a late 60's GE color table model (23v) which was junk, really, but it was better than nothing and gave me bragging rights! I remember eyeballing a 19" Zenith bw portable at the local dealer in the early 80s. I think it had been there a while as I asked about it and the owner knocked the price down significantly, from around $189 to $139 or something like that. When I bought my first new set it was a 12" bw Midland from Western Auto, the same $69-89 price that you could get just about everywhere from various brands in the 80's.
While color consoles were considered very expensive you could often get them financed and some areas had rent-to-own places like we have everywhere now.
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Bryan
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