Nice pile of TVs in York, PA

[leadlike]

To respond to some of the above posts: the 12" Sylvania is indeed the model you describe, it is not on a four-legged stand, someone just kicked in the speaker board. It was in pretty bad shape, but it looks like it is all there.

The one I couldn't ID is indeed a Sylvania-thanks for jogging my memory.

When I went to meet the guy, he took me to a small warehouse (more like a large garage), and pried a board loose so we could open the rotting carriage doors. As soon as we stepped in, you heard the rustling of all sorts of critters in the darkness-mostly squirrels. We only had a flashlight to show the way, and I began to guide it around the room.

There was a shelf with maybe a dozen old car radios on it, along with a completely destroyed Emerson 510. I left those alone, and trust me, that Emerson was toast, as I have kinda wanted one of those for awhile, and would be willing to put in some effort if it was salvageable.

I saw a lot of older stoves and rotting wooden furniture as well, and the seller explained that he and his father owned several pre-furnished apartments, and these were the tvs that went with them. They continued using these up until the 80s, from what I could tell. I can only wonder at the type of apartment you could get in the 80's that would come with a 12" Sylvania.

I decided to go with the Arvin, and it turns out the frame stand on top of the pile was intended for it, so I got that along with it. I don't think there are very many early Arvins around, so I was drawn to it. It appears to be complete, and the chassis looks a lot like an RCA T-100, though the control layout is quite different. The CRT tested dead, but after fiddling with it, I got it to come up well into the "good" scale, and it has a decent life test.

He said he had a spare crt, but it was in the back of the building, where the roof had collapsed. I struggled through the rubble, and saw the neck sticking out the remains of the crt's original shipping box-it was open to the sky, so the box was sopping wet and rotting away, the whole mess covered in pigeon waste and who knows what else (This is why I like living in PA-no Hantavirus to worry about). He said the crt was a 21'' for the Zenith, but no-it was a brand new 10BP4! We negotiated a price, and I took it home. It tests brand new, but it does have an intermittent short. So that was my American Pickers moment.