I knew it was way past time to buy a new TV set when the picture kept jumping back and forth from black and white to color. I had bought the Mitsubishi more than a decade ago, and it had worked well until about two weeks before the flipping started.
At first, I was able to control it by clicking it off and then back on, but soon the TV just took on a mind of its own and wouldn’t stop. It was obviously beyond repair and I was just prolonging its misery and mine.
I loved the flat-screen Vizio that my auction buddy Janet had bought a couple years ago. But since I don’t watch a lot of TV and my box was showing my favorite dramas and sci-fi shows quite well, I couldn’t come up with a good reason to buy a new one. Besides, the prices were too high.
At auctions, the prices for TVs were right – I could get one for around $5 – but the TVs themselves were wrong – they had too much junk in the trunk. The backsides protruded like my Mitsubishi and were a monster to move. Other owners were smartly tossing their old boxes and likely trading them in for flat screens. These, unlike mine, were still in good working condition as the auction assistants demonstrated by plugging them into an outlet. Interestingly, these black and white and color table top sets always sold – if even for a pittance.
The vintage TVs from the 1950s and earlier were the ones that usually caught my eye at auction. They had character and a uniqueness of design that you won’t find on TVs today. One flat screen looks like the next flat screen, distinguishable only by the name and the picture quality.
The floor models were more furniture than TV because the sets were tucked behind the cabinet doors. Some had names I was familiar with – Motorola and RCA – and others I was not – Capehart.
Because of their size, I’d never considered those TVs as collectibles, but I found several sites on the web of people showing off their collections. Many of them have restored those old TVs to working condition, and they are beautiful. If you’d like to start collecting, here’s a guide, with the author suggesting that you consider specializing based on the time period the sets were made.
The first TV sets became available to the public in the 1930s, but they exploded from the mid-1940s to mid-1950s when more people were able to afford them. The biggest boom was from 1948 to 1949, according to one site. RCA was said to be the largest manufacturer of TVs at that time. The RCA 62ITS, with only about 17,000 made, is said to be prized by collectors. It was the first set manufactured by RCA after World War II and sold for the overwhelming price of $226.
Most of us have this image of a family sitting around the TV watching some 1950s program whose name has long been forgotten. That was the Friday-night ritual in my home when I was growing up in the 1960s, with “Rawhide” and Rowdy Yates (Clint Eastwood, I learned later) on the screen.
I don’t remember what that TV looked like, but it was likely a floor model. At auction a few months ago, I came upon a floor model with a nice wooden cabinet in a bedroom in a home estate sale. The cabinet doors slid into a side pocket to reveal the green screen of the TV itself. It was a Capehart, a name unfamiliar to me.
It was catacorner to the bed – arranged so the owner could actually watch TV. I turned the knobs on the TV but could get nothing. I walked away after a few minutes of admiring it, and then overheard another auction-buyer speculate to a friend that the tubes and other parts were likely missing.
Even if it didn’t work, I figured it’d be a nice piece of furniture without any changes or adornment. A friend’s husband has found a novel way to re-create an old floor model: He disemboweled it and converted it into an aquarium – without the fish and water but with all the other fixings.
As for my own troubled TV, I finally decided it was time to let it go. I wanted a 32″ Sony with 1080p resolution but I could find no TV by any compnay with that configuration. Until a salesman at one store showed me a Vizio, which started out as a warehouse-only brand but appears to have come into its own.
The Vizio I bought doesn’t have the character of the Crosleys or RCAs or Motorolas from auctions (but close to them in price), but it shows a mean picture. It’s also 3-D-capable and internet-accessible for certain content. Now if I can only get it to play nice with my home network.
