What does collecting old tv's mean to young people?

[Freon]

Well I stumbled on this a little late. Hope nobody minds the bump.

I can name so many reasons why old TVs are fascinating and collectible to millenials and Generation Z. I am 18 myself and just starting college. I've "been into" and daily used CRT TVs and monitors since I was 3 when my first memories were of playing Sonic 2 on a Sega Genesis hooked up to a black Zenith set. My bedroom at home has a 26" Mitsubishi console TV, my current dorm room has a 19" Sylvania Superset.

For starters the tech behind CRTs, especially color tubes, is pretty insane. Three little guns firing electrons through a vaccum at the speed of light, guided by magnets through tiny holes to hit just the right spot so certain phosphors light up into a certain color. And it does it so fast the human eye just sees it as a solid image.

Vintage TVs had absolutely beautiful designs. They are pieces of furniture in their own right and often add flourish to a room as a conversation piece, living antique, an nostalgia-inducing reminder of our past as we continue racing towards new technological advancements. I wish 70s era woodgrain and chrome industrial design would come back in a big fashion. Way too much aluminum and glass these days. (Thanks, Apple...)

My love of CRTs is intertwined with my love of old videogames and old tech in general. Atari, Nintendo and Sega home consoles produced hundreds of legendary games that set a gold standard in a new industry and still hold up to the test of time and are genuinely as fun as if not more fun than today's multi-million cinematic fare. The classics just do not look and play as intended on modern LCDs with lag-inducing scaling and heavy post processing intended for digital images.

Almost everybody my age will write off CRTs as old news, heavy inefficent junk to dump in the landfill or use as target practice. I feel contractually obliged to keep alive a part of our history and of my childhood, if no one else will. It was the venerable boob tube that we watched man land on the moon. Television, Internet video and videogames owe their existence to them.