Col-R-Tel on Ebay
 

Folks! It is the complete system! Let the bidding begin!

http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-1950s-CO...QQcmdZViewItem

polaraman

I see charles has opened the bid on this one :D

Hope you can get it! I would love to have one to try out on my color adaptable admiral, but I'm not getting into a bidding war with a member...especially if I don't really need it.

Just imagine what would be involved in building a converter to make a NTSC set display Hi-Def!

Charles, if you win this, you'll have to make an mpg of it operating for the rest of us to see. :yes:

Wow!
 

I wondered if I'd ever see one of those. I wonder what differences the three different color wheels would have? I hope we get to see this working! Can a regular broadcast signal be used to make this work or is a special transmission from a special camera required?

"three different wheels" is a mistake - it's one wheel with three colors.

I also thought about whether this could be adapted to the CBS system - would probably need a different motor arrangement to speed up the wheel. At the Early Television convention, there have been working examples of both the Col -R-Tel (or similar) and the CBS system. (The CBS monitors have to be fed from an NTSC-CBS converter). Flicker on the Col-R-Tel is a bear, but the CBS is pretty good because of the higher field rate.

I wonder if the original source is someone here?

No way will I win, I just put that bid in case World War III starts and the guy ends early. It isn't a big bid. We'll see a BIG figure on that. I had one like it, and it's now in the hands of a Riverside, CA collector who has restored it and I believe has it working. This seller looks like one of those eBay pawnshops, where you take stuff and they sell it. I doubt if they have any idea of it's historical significance. I've only heard of a few of those still existing. This eBay auction, IF IT RUNS ITS COURSE, will be a good one to watch.

Charles

Whoever gets the Color-Tel will have a real prize. I have had one for 20+ years and have demo'd it all over the place including the ETF conventions.
It was a real interesting piece of engineering that is capable of a nice color picture. It came out in 1955 when color sets still cost around $900 and sold for around $150.
The disadvantages where the flicker and the small size. The one on Ebay has the picture desmallinator box used to reduce the size of the raster when color is shown. The adapter was meant to slide over the top of the set when color was not being shown.
The flicker can be reduced by watching the color program in a darkened room with low brightness. The flicker is more evident to some people more than others,threshold persistance of vision must vary.
Attached are some pix from a Colortel.

whew, it went for 4 grand.

:yikes: :yikes: :yikes: :yikes: :yikes: !

For cryin out loud, you can buy a new color TV at Wal mart for $100. :D

:eek: If I'da known they were that valuable I'd have stored the one I was babysitting for the ETF Museum a little further from the sump pump!

near $4000: Not surprised...

Charles

Anybody recognize the buyer? Any chance we'll get to see it somewhere?

The buyer is a collector from Italy, who has bought a few sets recently. The price was bid through the roof by him and by a guy on the west coast, who has been paying top dollar for sets recently. A more normal value of the Col-R-Tel is probably about $2,000

Does anybody know approximately how many Colortels would have been sold in this country? Were they just in the USA? What about other brands?
I wonder if we will ever find another nice Colortel in the USA?
It would be interesting to know if the collector in Italy will display his things in some museum or if he keeps them private.
If I were a rich man I would have paid many thousands for it.
I wonder if more or less people will become interested in such things as time goes by.