1948 Delco TV-71

Ok, in case you didn't follow me here from the Curbside thread, I'll recap: This tv was for sale on Craigslist and I went to look at it and bought it tonight.

When I got there the guy said I'll plug it in and turn it on for you. I said no, that wasn't necessary. He said "we plugged it in and turned it on the other night to burn off the dust and the screen lit up but couldn't get the vcr to work with it." I hadn't offered to buy it yet and I thought, what the heck it was still his tv at that point. He turned it on and a full, but rather dim, raster came on the screen. Couldn't get any static out of the speaker though.

I took off the back and the first thing I noticed was the selenium rectifier looked new. The guy said his uncle used to have a tv shop in Granite City and his parents bought the set used from him in the early 50's. He said they got a new tv in the early 60's and gave this one back to the uncle, who kept it. The guy said the uncle fixed it up sometime later and got it going again.

The tv obviously had seen a lot of use as the face plate is pretty worn. But, I figured since the uncle had worked on it and had it going again later, and with the new rectifier, I figured it had been recapped too. Maybe even he checked all the tubes and put in some new ones?

I decided for $65 it was worth the gamble. The cabinet is pretty rough. It needs refinishing and the veneer needs repaired in a couple of spots. There's a couple small burns on the top, but I'm not sure they go all the way through the veneer so I may be lucky there.

Here's some pics of the outside: It's hard to read the face plate but you can barely make out the Delco logo. It also has channel 1.