A really old TV on eBay

[Eric H]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...&category=3638

[Cory]

That's a pretty slick set, but I'm taken back a bit by the price. Has anyone seen another one of these? How rare is it?

Cory

[Eric H]

It's a pre-war (WWII) set, ultra rare!

Steve McVoys Early Television Site has some statistics on surviving pre war sets :

http://www.earlytelevision.org/amdatabase.html

It only lists 5 known survivors of this model!

Pre-war consoles have been going for $8,000 - 12,000 and more for a while now.

Btw, this set has been modified. The chassis photo shows a length of 300-ohm twinlead going from the antenna terminals to the RF section. 300-ohm twinlead was not introduced until 1943 - by RCA. The pre-war sets had 72-ohm inputs, and used twisted pair wire or coax lead-ins.

I hope this set hasn't had its RF section gutted and replaced by a post-war 12 channel VHF tuner! Some of the pre-war sets were modified that way after the war when the channel assignments changed.

[Rob]

Originally posted by wvsaz

I hope this set hasn't had its RF section gutted and replaced by a post-war 12 channel VHF tuner! Some of the pre-war sets were modified that way after the war when the channel assignments changed.

WV,

Why do you care...planning to buy it? Although it is nice to find undisturbed sets from these years the fact that the tuner may have been modified as you say probably won't realistically negate the sets current market value.

I spent about 1/3rd of the opening bid on a TV once, but it is one I actually watch. As far as my own museum collection goes it does what it can commensurate with the level of funding support it gets from its primary benefactor which has gone to zero lately because of financial pressures elsewhere. Donations always welcome!

There was a combo prewar console went on ebay a couple of years ago for around $22,000 IICRC. I'll have that in my file.

Rob

[Steve D.]

The picture on Steve McVoys site of this set is the same one pictured on e-bay. The seller states that the tuner is 3 channel. I thought these sets had 5 channels including channel 1. The more I read the description (imperfections) the less value I placed on this set. I wonder if this is one of the 5 known to exist?

[Steve McVoy]

I grabbed the photo from Ebay since I didn't have a color one for my site. The set is one of the 5 in existence, and is in pretty good shape. It is almost completely original.

The chassis is identical to the HM-171 table model, which has a 3 channel tuner.

[Steve McVoy]

The comment about the twinlead is correct, though many of the prewar sets used balanced inputs rather than coaxial. The HM-171 and 185 had twisted pair wire connecting the screw terminal strip to the tuner. The set on Ebay has had the wire replaced with twinlead.

Originally posted by Steve D.
I thought these sets had 5 channels including channel 1.

Steve,

The channel situation before WW2 is rather odd. In 1940 the FCC assigned channels 1 thru 18. Channels 1-7 were from 50 to 108 MHz, and channels 8 to 18 were from 156 to 294 MHz, with spaces in between some of the channels used by other services. Since it was difficult to get the available tubes to oscillate above 100 MHz, most manufacturers' receivers tuned only channels 1 thru 5. A few of the earlier sets tuned only three channels, since the most available in any one area was three (New York).

Before the war, only channels 1 thru 4 were actually used by existing stations. Channel 5 was never used. Channels 8 thru 18 were used by TV broadcasters like microwaves are used today, for relaying remote pickups back to the station, and for studio-transmitter links.

When the war ended, improved tube types developed during the war allowed manufacturers of receivers to build TV tuners that could receive the high band channels. Microwave technology became available immediately to the TV broadcasters, and they moved their auxiliary operations out of the high band VHF channels to microwave frequencies.

Here is a list of the 1940 channel assignments, with the stations that were active before and during the war (call signs left of the slash mark are the experimental calls used prior to July 1941, and those right of the slash are the commercial call letters issued after July 1, 1941:

FM radio stations 42 - 50 MHz

Channel [1] 50 - 56 MHz
W2XBS/WNBT (RCA-NBC) New York - now WNBC channel 4
W6XAO/KTSL (Don Lee) Los Angeles - now KCBS channel 2
W9XZV/WTZR (Zenith Radio) Chicago - R. I. P.

Channel [2] 60 - 66 MHz
W2XAB/WCBW (CBS) New York - now WCBS

Channel [3] 66 - 72 MHz
W3XE/WPTZ (Philco-NBC) Philadelphia - now KYW (CBS)
W2XB/WRGB (GE-NBC) Schenectady - now WRGB channel 6 (CBS)

Channel [4] 78 - 84 MHz
W2XWV/WABD (DuMont) New York - now WNYW channel 5 (FOX)
W9XBK/WBKB (Balaban & Katz) Chicago - now WBBM channel 2 (CBS)
W6XYZ/KTLA (Paramount) Hollywood - now KTLA channel 5

Channel 5 84 - 90 MHz
Channel 6 96-102 MHz
Channel 7 102-108 MHz
Channel 8 162-168 MHz
Channel 9 180-186 MHz
Channel 10 186-192 MHz
Channel 11 204-210 MHz
Channel 12 210-216 MHz
Channel 13 234-240 MHz
Channel 14 240-246 MHz
Channel 15 258-264 MHz
Channel 16 264-270 MHz
Channel 17 282-288 MHz
Channel 18 288-294 MHz