Estate Sale Finds in 2010!

[drh4683]

I did go to the sale in Naperville that was discussed in the other thread. There was indeed a Motorola Quasar there. It was one of the very few TV's on display that was actually for sale. They wanted $25 for it and it was half off day on Sunday. Its the hybrid Quasar II. Its a 1971 model and its in really nice shape. The thing works too, bright picture so the instant on must have been disabled or else it was never plugged in.

I also found a promotional Zenith coffee mug that showed some pictures of some of their mile stone TV's up through 1982.

There were also about 300+ vintage books on television, radio and computers. Nothing was newer than about 1975, even the computer books, and there were many of them were all based on the old main frame networks, punch cards, relay logic etc. It was a nice array of both servicing/repair and engineering. What made this such a good lot was the fact that it appears that practially every book ever published on color TV from the 50's-70's was in this lot. Tons of good books there, I liked every one of them and nobody was buying them. The shelf had a tag "all books $2.00 each" Under that there was a little note "ask about bulk purchasing for a better deal" There were like 6 shelves like the one you see with all these books.

Considering that I was so impressed with all those books, I wanted all of them to add to my technical library of obsolete technology, but I wasn't prepaired to pay $1.00 at half price per book as that would have still gone way over my budget. So I asked the guy at the sale if they would give me a deal if I buy all the books. He goes "make us an offer if you want them all, we gotta get this stuff out of here". So I said how about $50 for all of them? "Sure no problem, take them, get them out of here, they're yours" Then he goes "the guy we're selling this for will be pissed Im letting them go for this cheap, but he told us to clear everything out by the last day and do what it takes" So I loaded up about 7 decent sized boxes with these books and had a nice load on my truck.

I come to find out that the guy was still alive and he had a family owned lumber company in Chicago that has been in business since 1895. The guy was 63, he inherited the company after his father died and according to one of the people running the sale "he just pissed away the family fortune on this old electronic crap and now the company is out of business and the guy has to sell everything off and he is moving to Michigan"

This house in naperville was huge. You could tell he HAD money thats for sure, but he was not into the family business at all.

As for the CTC-16 roundie, I got to see his "private stash" that one of the sales people showed me in the back room that was off limits. It was nothing special, just a '64 model CTC-16 and it was beat to hell, tons of scratches and gouges on top of the cabinet.

Other than the 16 and this quasar, everything else was black and white and the only other TV that was forsale was about a 1957 RCA B+W console. He had a predicta and some DuMonts but none were for sale.

[zenithfan1]

Nice! I'm glad you got it, that's a nice looker too. The books will be more than handy, I'm sure. Too bad about the roundie but at least it wasn't a great one. Although, with a cabinet refinishing and recap, I'm sure it could have been a nice set, too bad it wasn't for sale. I'm resurrecting my "parts" Zenith roundie from '65 right now. THAT is going to be a project......

[Spinning Head]

Glad you got to the sale and got the Quasar. I was tempted, but had space, timing and transportation issues. It's great that it has a strong pix tube. I had a hard time going through the books. I picked up a half dozen on color TV, including "Color Television Engineering". The author, John Wentworth, explains in the introduction that the book is a compilation of his lecture notes that he used for lectures to RCA engineers in the early to mid 50's. It has a lot of explanations without a lot of math. It also has chapters on typical camera circuits (TK-41) and receiver circuits (CT-100). When I was there, there were two DuMonts at the foot of the stairs for sale at $50 each. Maybe he changed his mind.

[DaveWM]

Here is one my buddy found. I am fixing if for him, incomplete vert and lack of solid color sync, low contrast.

CTC 21 combo with the worst looking CRT I have seen big time mold (brown gunk). CRT test weak on two guns, but have not tried zapping it yet.

has power tuning that works, UHF tuner is gunked up, stereo sounds find has 4 big output transistors. Needs controls cleaned.

I think the vert problem was a corroded B+ line that was feeding the vert output tranny the electrolytic bypass cap was fine (as were most of the caps).

I did notice a green corroded filament wire that was on top of a pcb on the chroma board. I dont know if that could be an issue but I will go ahead and replace it. I suppose it could cause enough of a voltage drop that the tubes may have lower then normal emisson.

[drh4683]

I found one set on May 15th that I didn't post till now. It was in Morton Grove at 5847 Reba St. Typical untouched suburban 50's home. I found a nice 19" steel cabinet zenith luggable on the cart in the basement. It was $10 so I bought that. Then they wanted $5.00 for the cart! I hate it when they price them seperate and the cart is always disproprotionally priced with respect to the TV if you know what I mean. It was all half off so the whole deal cost me $7.50. I brought the TV home plugged it in and is it a typical Zenith? NO! This one actually doesn't work! I guess its to be expected that some fall through the cracks....No picture but good sound. Should be an easy fix, it doesn't look like the TV saw any hack work and everything is still intact.

This past Saturday I went to a sale in Westchester at 1942 Balmoral Ave. I picked up a 1966 Admiral color console. It was one of those rare TV's that happened to live its life in the front room since day one. Its decent, has a few vacuum cleaner gouges under the cabinet and some bubbling cateracts going on, but its a low hour set and the thing works. They must not have been TV people as all of the original admiral tubes are still in the chassis. It should clean up well, very dusty inside.

[DaveWM]

very nice find, both of them.

[Jeffhs]

I agree with DaveWM -- those are two excellent finds, especially the '66 Admiral. I don't see too many Admiral TVs these days -- I wonder how popular they were when they were new.

I didn't notice, either, whether that particular set has a remote. Looking at the front panel of that console, however, I couldn't help but notice the resemblance between it and the 25" portable TV in Oscar Madison's apartment in the '70s TV sitcom The Odd Couple. I have VHS tapes and DVDs of most of those shows and can't make up my mind whether the TV in the apartment is an Admiral or a Zenith -- but after seeing your Admiral console, I'm thinking the set in that show was an Admiral but I am by no means certain. The set had a remote that clicked, so it may well have had Admiral's Son-R (pronounced "sonar") full-function wireless remote control system.

With all the TVs you're finding, I bet you'll have your work cut out for you for some time, and I don't mean maybe. Besides the sets you've shown us here the last couple of weeks and these two, I think you may also have that bunch of sets you had back at your parents' place in Batavia, unless you put some or most of them on eBay or CL before you moved.

I hope you have enough room in your new place for all those TVs, plus the ones you found last week and showed here today. This all reminds me of when I was collecting old, cast-off TVs in suburban Cleveland, back in the late 1960s-'70s. My basement was full of old sets, some working, some barely working and some I just kept around for parts and tubes. My pride and joy in those days was a 1963 model 23" Zenith model K2739 b&w console in one of the nicest wood cabinets I'd seen in a long while. Found it on a curb in my old neighborhood in 1969. No tubes left in it, except the 1J3 HV rectifier and CRT--someone must have filched them all before putting the set out for the trash.

I got the set home, put all new tubes in it, and was rewarded with an excellent picture when I turned it on about a month later (that's how long it took me to get all the tubes). This set had a 6HA5 RF amplifier tube in the tuner, three video IF stages and a sound system I have not seen in any TV set since. The sound channel in this set was a 6BN6 gated-beam discriminator, 6BQ5 audio output, a tone control, and a 6x9 oval speaker with a rather large magnet. The sound was so good I patched an old FM tuner across the volume control and used the set as a hi-fi FM radio as well; I am amazed that Zenith didn't put a phono jack with input selector on the rear apron of the chassis, or a TV/phono switch on the tone control. Maybe they (and probably all other TV manufacturers of the period) had done away with the phonograph input by the '60s.

[AUdubon5425]

I may have gone for that jukebox in the basement.

How come you have a Minnesota plate on the back of that Dodge?

[drh4683]

Originally Posted by AUdubon5425

I may have gone for that jukebox in the basement.

How come you have a Minnesota plate on the back of that Dodge?

They wanted $950 for the juke which was insane.

As for those '71 plates, its cause I had the car at a car show that weekend and I wanted plates that represented the year of the car and minnesotas were all I had....

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by drh4683

They wanted $950 for the juke which was insane.

As for those '71 plates, its cause I had the car at a car show that weekend and I wanted plates that represented the year of the car and minnesotas were all I had....

I was wondering about that '71 Minnesota license plate as well; I didn't realize the car was yours. I thought the car was in a garage at the house where you got the Admiral TV, and the owner had moved to the Chicago area in 1971; then, he or she put the car in the garage and forgot about it for the next 39 years.

My dad had a 1959 Thunderbird which he restored and drove until 1967; I remember that because the car sat in our garage in suburban Cleveland for years afterwards with 1967 plates, next to his 1963 Chevrolet BelAir. I still remember the license numbers on both cars, even now, over 45 years later: the BelAir had DE 5613, while the T-bird had RM 3165. I probably wouldn't have remembered those numbers so well after all these years were it not for the fact that the numbers were mirror images of each other.

BTW, as to the $950 price tag on the jukebox, I agree -- it is waaaay too high, even for a vintage machine. Depending on its condition, I don't think it's worth more than $200 at most; if it is in poor shape and/or is not working, I'd lower that figure to $150. I don't know of any vintage jukebox collectors except perhaps for Chad Hauris, and I haven't seen his posts here lately. In any event, I'm surprised he didn't go after the $950 jukebox, high price and all. If it's a machine he doesn't already have, I would think he would find some way to get it, the distance between West Texas and Chicago notwithstanding.

[AUdubon5425]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

...Depending on its condition, I don't think it's worth more than $200 at most; if it is in poor shape and/or is not working, I'd lower that figure to $150. I don't know of any vintage jukebox collectors except perhaps for Chad Hauris...

Depending on what it is, jukeboxes go for more than you'd think Jeff. There are plenty of jukebox collectors out there - and a whole little industry of used and reproduction parts too. It may not be worth $950 to you or I, but if it lived in that clean basement its whole life (not on a route in a barroom somewhere) and works they might just get that much or close to it. Heck, I gave $200 for my Seeburg DS160 in fully non-operational condition. Of course, I'd bet the economy affected the jukebox market like everything else.

[AUdubon5425]

Originally Posted by drh4683

As for those '71 plates, its cause I had the car at a car show that weekend and I wanted plates that represented the year of the car and minnesotas were all I had....

I have a '67 Illinois plate, but it's not nearly as nice as that '71 Minn. plate.

Louisiana passed a law allowing "year of manufacture" plates to be legally registered on antique vehicles. One day I'll find a nice 70/71 "B" plate for my Cutlass.

[leadlike]

Jukeboxes certainly don't go for much around here, typically a working one for 200. Just recently I was at an auction where some early 78 rpm jukeboxes went for less than 100 dollars apiece. Although that doesn't stop every antique mall and Craigslister from pricing their late 70's junker as pure gold. I guess I have seen plenty of them FOR sale, but never SOLD.

Since I don't venture out to estate sales much, just what do they do with the overpriced stuff that certainly won't sell? Do they just wind up taking offers in the 11th hour? Or do they have a buyer lined up (ie take it all to auction, etc.).

[drh4683]

Sale in Northfield at 267 Wagner Rd. For the first time in going to estate sales, I found a 20" Zenith "mini console" color set. Its a 1967 model with the 20X1C38 chassis. It was being used as the support stand for the BPC set. Under these circumstances I would have assumed the Zenith didn't work, however I was wrong. I turned it on and it worked fine with a good color picture on channel 23! I would assume the bubbling cateracts is what made this TV go out of service. The CRT is a February 1977 RCA and its strong as new.
In the same room I also found an early Micro 2G stereo Zenith portable phono from 1964. This is one of my favorite models with the green and blue speaker cloth. I had one 10+ years ago and sold it on ebay back around the same time and never found another nice one since. It has the typical rock hard idler tire. This is a tube type unit too.

[zenithfan1]

Nice! I like the style of the Zenith, I haven't seen that exact control and speaker layout before. The speaker grille is different than what I'm used to seeing. The Danish Modern cabinet on that Admiral puts a smile on my face as well.