Stay clear of sellers like that. Over paying can be bad enough but when you're also dealing with a unreliable seller or a scammer which makes it worse. Mark my words, if you drove 6.5 hours to see it he'd not be home or find some excuse for you to not see it, or request that you send him some payment.
Is this the TV you're interested in?
I would want to know the condition of the CRT and other details like the cabinet condition. I don't know what you define as overpriced, but I wouldn't want to go over $150 or 200, and there's many collectors that here that will say that's way over priced and they'd be reluctant if it was $50.
As for him not being able to provide decent pictures, it's 2023 and it's safe to say that anyone with internet access has a digital camera in their phone or a camera.
Take a step back and wait and a deal will show up. There are still 50's TV's around for resonable prices.
I'm currently dealing with the miseries of a seller like this on ebay. Zero feedback seller and he refuses to ship the TV from Ontario to BC. I had to start a claim on it to try and either get it shipped (which looks unlikely) or refunded through ebay. The only reason I bothered with him was the TV is a rather rare Canadian Marconi that I've been wanting to add to my collection.
As for it being repaired, The amount of knowledgeable tube TV techs is small, so small nowadays that all of us at here on Videokarma and ARF I would say amount to the majority of us still around.