Picked up this Admiral Bakelite tonight. Missing the volume knob and the cap on the picture tube and some of the wires are broken off pretty close to the end. It has the pencil box cover though. $20 Craigslist find. Just got it off the truck.

Still worth many times more than $20 in the condition you describe.

Now, I hate you...

That set is one of my short list of desired TVs. I need more Bakelite in my collection, and Admirals are easy to restore and good performers.

Great Score.

Nice score! Most importantly you have the oh so often broken off pencil box door

Thank you gents. The door itself seems fine, no cracks and it has the pin slots on each end however the mount on the case seems to have a problem. I haven't checked into it yet. The PO had this set for about 30 years and he said it worked for about 10 years then got put away. He remembered going to the drug store in Anoka and testing tubes on the floor tester.

Cool TV!! Nice score!!

Some CRT testers have a set of leads with clips on the end for connecting to odd sockets. If you have one of those you could test the CRT. If not but you do have a CRT tester, you could stick some wire in the the appropriate socket and connect to the CRT with clip leads. If the CRT tests good you should be able to solder extensions onto the short wires and get a cap off of some old dead CRT. Someone will have one.

Here is a little better picture. The pencil box cover is off and sitting on the workbench. This thing seems quite a bit bigger than the 10" version.

Here's an Admiral 24A12 I picked up not long ago. Like some of you, I wanted one of these Admiral bakelite mini-consoles for my collection for some time.

The story on how I acquired this one is a bit convoluted. I was contacted by someone in southern California who was a collector of various antiques, including bakelite items. He had a beautiful bakelite Admiral tabletop 7" set and this 24A12. At first, he seemed to want to sell both of them to me, rather than having me fix them for him. However, his price was too high, so we agreed that I would fix the sets for him. Especially when he came to understand that I don't charge too much, I think he wanted to keep the sets.

So I fixed them both -- got them working perfectly. When the sets were back in his posession (via a third party that drove them down south), he said that the little set worked fine, but the 24A12 didn't. This kind of thing is always a big disappointment, and one of the risks you face when you can't deliver the restored set to the customer personally. I was feeling bad for him, and he had a renewed interest to sell the set to me, so we settled on a price and I bought it. The same third party brought the set back to me again (making money off all three legs of this transportation marathon).

Guess what happened when it got back to me and I plugged it in? It worked perfectly, just like it did when it left my shop in the first place. Not exactly sure what all happened here, but the set is in fact really nice, with nearly a flawless bakelite cabinet. It's quite possible that everyone involved is happy, especially the guy who transported it three times! (he's one of our friendly forum members)