All very good guesses!
Electronic M hit the nail on the head, It was retrofitted by a prophouse.
The seller, Jimmy Ray Pickens, got it on a movie set he was on, they didn't use it in the movie, I can't remember what movie he said it was, but maybe it's on his IMDB. (The movie was set in the 50's, no duh) As for the weird colors, the photo with the color bars was really dark, so I brightened up the rest of the photo while keeping the color bars the same brightness, albeit very crudely. Ironically, the crt for the bpc (I think it's a 94' sharp) they used was made in USA, (A48AAB26X)
They glued the tiny speaker from the sharp into the cabinet, and just for the heck of it I put in a speaker from a late 50's rca tv that fit right on the original mounting bolts and hooked it straight up to the sharp tv board, and it sounds really good, I didn't think the little sound chip on the sharp tv board could do all that, especially going into an 8 ohm speaker. I hate to admit it but this tv kicks butt as it is, I would never do what they did, but there's a chance this thing may have been destroyed completely if they hadn't done what they had.
Amazingly, it still has all the tags and has "499" stamped on the back and the lid, serial number? RBT4163 is painted in white in the bottom of the cabinet, I don't know if there's anything else that can differentiate it.
I can't say I'm going to build a glass factory and roll my own 15gp22, but this thing definitely gives me the urge to do that. As it is, I have rocker switches for power and volume wired into the holes on the side for convergence and focus, (blasphemy, I know!) and plain old coax going into it, so at least it's doing what RCA would have wanted it to, okay, maybe not, but at least it's doing what I want it to do
