Estate Sale Finds In 2008!

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by bgadow

. Oh, there is a basement! And sure enough, as soon as I rounded the corner there sat a TV. Well, no, nothing real exciting. It's an Admiral Nova II "suitcase" portable.

My other find, the next day, doesn't qualify as an estate sale find-got it at the Hillbilly Flea Market just north of Ashland, for another $3. This is the newest version of the Philco Seventeener that I've seen. Not sure offhand of the year; the model is P2710BR, which Sams only lists as being in 1156-SED (special equipment) and I know it is a little older than that.

That Admiral "Nova II" set reminded me of a small Admiral color portable TV my aunt and uncle had in the 1970s, after their 1960s-vintage 23" Sylvania console went belly-up. The tuner cluster on your Admiral is identical to the one on theirs, except your Nova II has a larger CRT and is b&w.

IIRC, the Philco "Seventeener" 17" b&w portable was a successor to or predecessor of the company's "Briefcase 19" nineteen-inch set. The latter was introduced in 1961, while the former must have appeared in Philco's line of b&w portables at least a year or two later.

I don't know much about the Seventeener, but the Briefcase 19 was a heavy set, even though it did not have a power transformer. (I had a Briefcase 19, a trash-day find, in the early 1970s until 1975 or so; worked very well all that time.) Blame most of the weight of the Briefcase 19 on the 19" CRT (the Seventeener was probably just as heavy with its 17" tube) and the fact that there was a fair amount of metal in the set, including the cabinet, which was all metal except for the CRT mask. This set also had a unique built-in rabbit-ear antenna; the dipoles were actually built into either end of the handle, which could be rotated 90 degrees in either direction (the dipoles retracted into the handle for carrying as well). Haven't seen a TV since with an antenna like that, and may never see the likes of it again.