Estate Sale Finds in 2010!

[marty59]

I always look forward to this estate sale thread!

I managed to pick up a 57' Zenith Z300E chassis 17Z22Q with the "Space Commander 200" (with remote!) that I had been interested in for the last few weeks. It's a faux blond wood finish metal cabinet that sits on a wooden pedastal. Has a water mark on the top that's down to the metal..ugh.

Nice folks to talk with and they let me pop off the back. Brightner present but with my checker just being turned on the emission showed signs of increasing, but tracking was down still, but potential! Had not been used in years.. They wanted $125.00 for it! I honestly and politely told them I would give them half but no more and they declined.

So after they were "stuck" with it they emailed me with a counter offer of $75.00....well, I bit. I like the TV and it will be a fun project, I'll have to repaint the cabinet... just match it up as close as possible..It'll look good!

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by marty59

I always look forward to this estate sale thread!

I managed to pick up a 57' Zenith Z300E chassis 17Z22Q with the "Space Commander 200" (with remote!) that I had been interested in for the last few weeks. It's a faux blond wood finish metal cabinet that sits on a wooden pedastal. Has a water mark on the top that's down to the metal..ugh.

Nice folks to talk with and they let me pop off the back. Brightner present but with my checker just being turned on the emission showed signs of increasing, but tracking was down still, but potential! Had not been used in years.. They wanted $125.00 for it! I honestly and politely told them I would give them half but no more and they declined.

So after they were "stuck" with it they emailed me with a counter offer of $75.00....well, I bit. I like the TV and it will be a fun project, I'll have to repaint the cabinet... just match it up as close as possible..It'll look good!

You had me going for a while with the first sentence of your reply: "I managed to pick up a 57' Zenith ..." The first thing that came to mind was that you had bagged a 57' flat-panel HDTV, but then I saw the chassis number and knew that couldn't possibly be right. The 17Z22Q chassis was designed for the 4:3 aspect ratio and to operate with a standard CRT, decades before there was any such thing as high-definition television in this country. I then looked up the chassis number on Google and found that this chassis had been manufactured by Zenith in the year 1957--as mentioned, several decades before really large-screen televisions (over 30 inches) were even thought of here. The problem was that the apostrophe was placed after the number (57') rather than ahead of it ('57). The former would be used to describe a huge HDTV flat-panel (I've seen them advertised in flyers in my Sunday paper for Best Buy; you'd need a living room the size of Texas to accomodate anything that big--sheeesh....and I thought Montgomery-Ward's "The Montgomery" 3-way console TV/stereo/phono was huge at nine feet long); the latter is used to abbreviate calendar years to two digits.

I also wondered about your statement that you had to repaint the Zenith's cabinet. I had thought the set was in a solid-wood cabinet and couldn't imagine why anyone would want to repaint a blonde (or any other shade) wooden cabinet, although I know it has been done in the past--often with hideous-looking results. Then I read the item description and saw exactly what you were referring to: a Zenith TV in a metal, faux-woodgrain cabinet--the woodgrain having been, yup, you guessed it, painted on. First time I ever saw anything like that. Oh well. The set was resting on a real wood pedestal, so at least part of the cabinet (the lower half) was actual wood. The other thing that should have tipped me off that the finish was painted on was your statement that there was a stain of some sort on top which had gone through to the metal; I could tell you didn't care for that when I saw your comment "ugh" in your post when you were describing the damage to the finish.

[marty59]

Gee, Jeffhs...

I don't know if I should laugh or apologize...but now that I quit laughing I'll try to remember where to put that apostrophe next time! And I do mean that in the nicest way!!

Thanks for catching my error...

[AndyMack]

Great finds Doug! I'd love to have that mini-console here in my office. Perfect size, and a Zenith to boot! Like another poster said, I always look forward to the new additions to the estate sale thread. I can live vicariously through you guys! lol

[Jeffhs]

Regarding Doug's newest estate sale find (the Zenith 20" mini-console), the set looks great for its age and should perform in typical Zenith fashion after the usual overhaul. However, I'm wondering if the remote receiver is still in the set. Looks like the manual channel selector knob and the remote/manual switch on the back of the set are missing unless, as I suspect, they just aren't showing up well in the picture.

BTW, what is the difference between the SC-100 and SC-200 remotes? I know the SC-100 was channel up and on/off (the latter accomplished by setting a remote trip tab on an unused channel to shut the set off). Does the SC200 add the on/off (and/or volume step and mute) functions to the basic SC100?

Thanks in advance.