[julianburke]

I did an estate sale Friday in the UT area of Fort Sanders neighborhood and in the very back hidden room (looked like a converted porch) was a neat little 19" Zenith B4030W Chromacolor set with its' original Gusdorf cart. They were introduced in late 1970, 4 tube hybrid with black plastic and walnut grain cabinet with the strange looking tripler. I sold a few of them after high school working for Gray's TV at Christmas time, repaired many early on but when I was reselling used TV's for myself in the later '70's, never saw but 2 or 3 after that like they had disappeared and I have been wanting to find a rather nice one for close to 30 years to no avail until Friday. I still can't believe they're 42 years old!!

Poor little thing, nice complete, dusty from about 15 years of disuse, sat there with a lamp and some other junk on top with a $8 price sticker on it and I got there second day of the sale with no one looking at it. I plugged it in (carefully listening for any abnormality) came up with a "soft" HO tube but straightened out and it has a healthy CRT with a crisp picture! (tuned in one UHF station) The nice guy working the sale let me have it for $5. (Hoping he would give it to me when I told him I didn't want to see it to end up in the dempster!) I liked them very much as they had fantastic color and still look good!!

It's in one of my buildings awaiting a total cleanup, safe & sound. The 67 year old woman who passed away about a year ago (never married) must have liked Zenith products (had other Zenith console and radio) OR because her house was less than 400 feet from the former Graybar Electric Co! (Zenith distributor-where I used to buy all my Zenith parts-now a furniture warehouse) She was a high up assistant to one of the bigwig principles during the 1982 Knoxville World's Fair in 1982 and had many unusual World's Fair items which I also bought such as press passes she would give out to the press, nameplate with logo and title to her office and a hardhat with WF logo & name on it used for the opening ceremony with Ronald Reagan giving his opening speech.

Well, it made my day......

The lesson reiterated: Always do estate sales when you can as you will usually find something esp. in an older persons home. What gets me is when you first walk into an antique store or mall kiosk the sales person will almost always ask: "Are you looking for anything in particular?" (Like they would have what we are looking for) I always answer "ALWAYS" and they usually look at me funny. When looking for anything in particular, you will never find it. Great finds are always serendipitous.