It's getting hard to even give away CRT TV's

[DavGoodlin]

At the S.A. fambly store near where I work, it is an unofficial e-waste drop off. Over 2 years, I rescued about a dozen or more small screen sets ranging from 1970 to 1984. I go by every week and EASILY spot something that is not black-gray plastic. TVTim finally got a remote control (!) 15" 1972 RCA BW thanks to this SA. I have several 12" BWs, all working with minimal effort.

Unlike the county I live in, which has a free drop off for CRT and other household "hazmats", waste management in the county this SA is in charges to dispose of CRT sets. Apparently, folks were dropping them off there after hours or after a donation was refused.

These will get recycled otherwise and SA just palletizes wraps and they go somewhere. I often pick one up while they're open and if I'm asked to, make a donation. The facility where I live will not let you take anything though. I have tried to get them to understand, through pictures of what they should sell, not recycle!

[Tube TV]

Originally Posted by ESigma25

I've had a hell of a time trying to find a nice early 80s RCA or Zenith 13" set, because any time one DOES pop up it's gone almost immediately to the retro gaming crowd.

The last RCA that I picked up must have been about 10 years ago. A spare XL-100.
I also picked up a few early 13" Hitachi sets around that time

Those XL-100's are tough. I ran one every day for 18 hours a day from 2007 to 2018 without servicing. I stopped using it after it would start arcing somewhere when it was first turned on in the morning. I'm assuming it's a cold solder joint or carbon tracking. After all those hours the picture is still just as sharp and bright as when I got it in 2002 at a thrift store for $2.00

Originally Posted by DavGoodlin

At the S.A. fambly store near where I work, it is an unofficial e-waste drop off. Over 2 years, I rescued about a dozen or more small screen sets ranging from 1970 to 1984. I go by every week and EASILY spot something that is not black-gray plastic. TVTim finally got a remote control (!) 15" 1972 RCA BW thanks to this SA. I have several 12" BWs, all working with minimal effort.

Unlike the county I live in, which has a free drop off for CRT and other household "hazmats", waste management in the county this SA is in charges to dispose of CRT sets. Apparently, folks were dropping them off there after hours or after a donation was refused.

These will get recycled otherwise and SA just palletizes wraps and they go somewhere. I often pick one up while they're open and if I'm asked to, make a donation. The facility where I live will not let you take anything though. I have tried to get them to understand, through pictures of what they should sell, not recycle!

I missed out on a bunch of TV's around 2008. There was a local electonics guy that passed and had I known I probably could have had around 150 to 200 sets for taking them away. There was a garage that was about 16X24 that was TV's up to the rafters, then a woodshed that was solid TV's, and more sets in the carport and in the house. He seemed to be picking sets up in the late 1970's early 90's so there was a lot of late 50's early 60's tube B&W and color. Loads of early 70's color sets. All that ended up going to the E waste recycler before I knew about it.

[MIPS]

I put a 27" Citizen set with remote at our local makerspace for free. Works great. Bright picture. Has a fairly well documented Jungle chip for RGB conversion.
At the end of the year I'm being asked to take it back because it's been on the table for five months and it's just taking up space.

Out here in BC where the houses are expensive and the tastes of Millennials is even more expensive it's a weird hard sell where most people won't take any other brand of CRT off your hand unmodified unless its a Trinitron. With the flow of PVM's out of Hollywood North in the last few years everyone has a taste to play Street Fighter on only the highest quality tubes.

Our local value village occasionally gets CRT sets and even computer monitors in and they sell. Mind you the prices are all over the place (a 27" for $2.99 and a 4" color portable for $25) but it's a massive change over ten years ago when they refused to accept CRT's.