antique television

**cheezyflier** · June 29th, 2009, 17:49

i was helping the building manager clean out the junk storage and we came across this antique television: http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s...zyridr/TV1.jpg

it is (i think) a 1948 general electric 10" model 806. it works like a dream.
any of you guys know anything about this stuff? how i might find out about it's value? i'm hoping it will be worth enough to buy a 1/2 decent guitar.

***Willy*** · June 29th, 2009, 18:42

Canada hasn't switched over to HD TV yet? Hopefully they'll have better sense.

***Panther_99FS*** · June 29th, 2009, 18:56

Way cool!

**Piglet** · June 29th, 2009, 19:46

Wonder how much the tubes are worth? Do they still make tubes?
Still remember playing with the tube tester machine at the local Thrifty's drug store when I was a wee piglet.

***Navy Chief*** · June 30th, 2009, 05:52

That is cool! I am amazed it still works!!! NC

Here's a memory. I remember when remotes first came out. They were sensitive to coins/keys jiggling in your pocket. I could walk into our family room, shake my keys, and change the channel. My dad would get so mad!!!!

FlyTexas · June 30th, 2009, 06:22

Originally Posted by Piglet

Still remember playing with the tube tester machine at the local Thrifty's drug store when I was a wee piglet.

Boy, that brings back memories. They had one of those machines at an electronics store my Dad used to shop at when I was a kid. I used to play with the machine while my Dad would search for replacement vacuum tubes. Happy days.

Brian

***Moparmike*** · June 30th, 2009, 07:03

Yup that looks like it'd be late 40s vintage. I've probably got the Sam's Photofact schematic set for it somewhere down at the shop.
(I had the complete set of Sam's from #1 up until the early-90s. Lost everything from the mid-70s on up when my shop burned in 94 though.)

Yep, you can still get many of the tubes used in these old tubers. There are a few electronic suppliers that can get new manufacture tubes from (no surprise...) several of the Eastern European countries like Bulgaria and Hungary.

I couldn't guess on the value of it though. Vintage boob-tubes have a niche collecter following much smaller than the antique radio buffs. Most of the radio guys wring their noses at TVs but there are some that will jump all over any old TV sets.
Some sets will bring surprising prices but some aren't worth much more than the salvage value of the tubes inside. You'd need to check with a vintage club to see if there'd be any interest in it.

I've got a 1953 RCA 12" & a Zenith Super R chassis from around the same year that I picked up while I was still running the shop. The RCA still works great but that Super R needs one of the IF tubes (that isn't available new anymore). I don't really collect them, they were just neat little boxes to have on display.

***Moparmike*** · June 30th, 2009, 07:10

Originally Posted by Willy

Canada hasn't switched over to HD TV yet? Hopefully they'll have better sense.

I haven't heard if Canada is making the big switch. They don't have an overactive bunch of Homeland Security bozos like we do down here.
That is the reason why we got this digital broadcast business shoved down our throats... Part of the freed up frequencies are to be used for remote security camera transmissions.

The whole digital TV thing here is a joke. I used to get 9 different channels down at my shop at the farm. Now that it's digital I get 3...and one of them constantly cuts out so bad that it's just plain unwatchable.

***srgalahad*** · June 30th, 2009, 08:00

Here's a couple of links from a quick search:

http://www.vintagetvsets.com/
http://bertinot.com/tv/

The second one has a pic of a GE 806

We are switching to digital (some now, all by next spring or so). Being on cable it wasn't much of a big deal and I doubt most people here used analog anyway.
People out in the sticks like Mike

probably all jumped to satellite several years ago because there wasn't much analog available due to the distances.
So now I've got a 36" 4:3 tv on digital but HD is going to wait until I can afford a new TV.. like I really care... the female CSI's lok pretty good even without HD

Rob

**Lionheart** · June 30th, 2009, 08:19

You can still get tubes from alot of resources, usually used, but working.

Ebay is a good place also for tubes.

We had a tube tester also at the local K-Mart. I dont know why that machine fascinated me so much. I was always on the lookout at home for a tube laying around that I could test one day, lol..

Bill

**cheezyflier** · June 30th, 2009, 11:06

i talked to a museum guy this morning. he corrected me, it's a 1949 model 10t. it's worth about $100 if i could find a buyer.

**Naismith** · June 30th, 2009, 11:14

They made things to last in those days, now I think redundancy is built in to force us to replace/upgrade. In some ways it is a shame, in others it keeps companies in business.
We have been through 4 electric kettles, 2 Vacuum cleaners and 2 washing machines in the past 5 years. Yet I still have socks and underpants in my drawer which I wore at college 35 years ago (yewwww!) - unfortunately the pants are little too tight these days.
Is this too much information?

**Tako_Kichi** · June 30th, 2009, 11:59

Originally Posted by Naismith

I still have socks and underpants in my drawer which I wore at college 35 years ago (yewwww!) - unfortunately the pants are little too tight these days.

This is funny as I sit here in a T-shirt for a quadrathon event (swim, run, kayak, cycle) I was involved with that bears the year 1991 as part of the design on the front! :isadizzy:

I guess I still have a few years wear left in it according to your experience!

***Moparmike*** · June 30th, 2009, 14:43

Originally Posted by srgalahad

We are switching to digital (some now, all by next spring or so). Being on cable it wasn't much of a big deal and I doubt most people here used analog anyway.
People out in the sticks like Mike

probably all jumped to satellite several years ago because there wasn't much analog available due to the distances.

I was wondering if you guys got suckered into the digital switch too.

I feel for anyone that has to try and deep fringe those digital signals! 120 miles is a long distance to pick up an analog signal...and now with the newer lower powered digital transmitters it's all but impossible for a lot of folks.

You're right on many rural folks have gone to the small dish sat systems. But up until a couple years ago when it finally got squared away many of them around here were still holding onto the antennas because of the BS that was going on about not being able to get any local news/weather. (True LOCAL weather, not the Weather Channel BS, is important to farming folks.)

I've still got probably the most tweaked out antenna system in the area. Ultra deep fringe with a +15dB amp and rotor system...but even buying that stuff at wholesale prices it was spendy.
A basic deep fringe setup (ant, amp, rotor) that I normally installed for my customers around here is worth about $500-600 their cost. This would pull in analog crystal clear, but even they can't reliably pull in half of the digital transmitters that replaced the analog transmitters that they replaced.