Met up with freakaftr8 (Shawn)

[Carmine]

I guess I'll chime in on this as well... I'm 35, and my first memories of TV are of my grandparents 1968 Zenith color set. I suppose that set would have been around 8 years old by the time I had any real memory of it. My grandfather was the kind of guy who either fixed things himself, or had some kind of connection to somebody that did it on the side. So I remember the back being off that Zenith being fascinated with the glowing glass bulbs inside, and the extra "tubes" that my grandparents kept in a living room coffee table.

I remember being sad when somebody gave my grandfather $50 for the Zenith when it developed a color-rainbow problem (3.58 crystal) and somebody decided it wasn't worth fixing. They also had a 1976 19" Chromacolor II. Pretty much everybody in my family had Zenith sets, so I guess somebody appreciated the difference.

The first set I ever got was a mid-sixties 17" B&W Zenith that I found at the curb and a friend and I dragged home in a wagon. At that time, (early/mid 80s) you could still find tubes and testers. I remember this series set had a toasted 4BZ6, so it was an easy fix, and it worked great after that.

For a while, it seemed like I was fixing everybody's old basement tube sets. Man it sure seemed like most of them were Zeinths with simple tube problems... Guess they sold really well in the Detroit area!

Just like Tony V, I got into cars as a teenager, but never dumped my old TV sets. Soon as I bought my first house, it was game-on for old TVs, lol. Problem is, I don't have the greatest basement for TV collecting. Whenever I get my "keeper" house, you can bet I'll remedy that.