Will sets left alone be worth more?

[RobtWB]

"The early sets required regular tweaking and maintenance, and many have lasted over half a century of either disuse, or moderate use and continuous maintenance, or any condition in the continuum between. The reliability of properly-restored earlier sets will be the same now as when they were new. And that is a reliability nowhere near what late model sets give--for about 10 years for most makes."





How true the above quote is.

You know that there are days that I get really frustrated with the vintage sets.
Even my 80's and 90's sets occasionally require tweaking, whether it be readjusting the color, tint brightness, contrast etc.

Sometimes I am really tempted to run to a big box store and just buy a new lcd or plasma set as an everyday watcher. Any brand should do, ... from what I see only the name on the sets are different. At least with one of these, all I should have to do for the next 10 years is change the remote batteries.

[azguy1878]

Wow thanks for all the reply's guys, its been really interesting reading all the posts. Can anyone tell me if Packard Bell made all of their own tubes? I remember reading somewhere that there are certain tubes that were only made by a few companies...

I just rechecked my avatar set and all the tubes are PB except for one RCA tube. I guess that means its not 100% factory original

For some reason its been difficult to find any info on this particular set, or even PB TV's in general. I think mainly because its not old enough to be of interest to most collectors...but oh well. I also noticed that a previous owner carved their SSN into the back...I thought that was interesting

[electroking]

Originally Posted by azguy1878

Wow thanks for all the reply's guys, its been really interesting reading all the posts. Can anyone tell me if Packard Bell made all of their own tubes? I remember reading somewhere that there are certain tubes that were only made by a few companies...

I just rechecked my avatar set and all the tubes are PB except for one RCA tube. I guess that means its not 100% factory original

For some reason its been difficult to find any info on this particular set, or even PB TV's in general. I think mainly because its not old enough to be of interest to most collectors...but oh well. I also noticed that a previous owner carved their SSN into the back...I thought that was interesting

Your enthusiasm for originality is commendable, however you've got to
realize that tubes in TV set were 'normal wear items'. If you have determined
that nearly all of the tubes in your set are factory originals (from date codes
or otherwise), you can still be proud of what you have on hand: it is
most likely that your set has very few hours of operation.

You should note that many TV manufacturers used custom branded tubes
that were actually made by one or more of the tube companies. I don't
think that Packard Bell was into vacuum tube production, but someone
else may have more accurate info on this. Good luck!

[bgadow]

I had thought about this question before as it pertains to old radios, and my answer works here as well: some folks will pay huge money for an unbuilt Heathkit because they want to be the guy who gets to put it together. Many of us get our joy out of old sets by recapping them and troubleshooting, getting them back to working condition. There will come a day when the percentage of sets that have not been through the hands of collectors will be very, very small. Some of us, many years from now, will lament the fact that we have nothing left in our collection that needs an old-fashioned recap. We will hunger for a 'virgin'. We will someday pay extra for that.

I'm fairly certain that Packard-Bell never manufactured a single tube; they bought them from other companies who applied the P-B name. If you are a real stickler you could try to find a good P-B replacement; probably not too easy, but somebody will have it.

[jeyurkon]

Same here. I have a Majestic 71 radio that I bought last year. Nice wood, the radio works, $100 didn't seem bad. But I don't care for the previous electronic restoration so I'm redoing it.

Undoing their repairs is going to be more work than if they hadn't worked on it. In this case, yeah only the tech (me) knows what's in there. But I do know and it bothers me. Actually I'm glad there's something left for me to work on.

There will be some performance improvement when I'm done, but it won't be alot. The work I'm putting into it would be more somewhat more rewarding if it was needed to make the radio work.

John