Good morning, I ran into a tube listing that peeked my interest. I cannot see it in person and I want to submit a best offer but I do not know what these tubes would be worth, or what their purpose was for. Perhaps the kind gentleman here are familiar with these tubes pictures below and can brief me on them.

Just my personal view:

--I wouldn't pay more than 50 cents each for un-boxed, un-tested tubes

--Large tubes with Bakelite bases can be useful. Break out the glass and save the bases to use for plug-in coils for homemade radios.

--I would look through the lot, trying to find at least a few tubes that fit my interests. If you have no experience with tubes, I wouldn't buy them.

If you have no use for them, I wouldn't buy them. At last year's CHRS surplus sale, they were selling bags of tubes (about 50 in a bag) for $5.00.

Rich

No telling from the pictures if there is anything useful in that pile. My advice is to just pass it up. Buy tubes as you need them rather than a pile of unknowns that you may never use.

"peeked my interest" ...
This is a frequent mistake most folks seem to make.
The correct word is PIQUED
"piqued my interest"

"When you hear this phrase, you might assume it's “peaked my interest� or even “peeked.� But it's neither of those—the correct word in this context is “piqued,� meaning “to excite or stimulate.� Using the wrong word is a common mistake, both because of how obscure a word “piqued� is and because it sounds just like “
REF:
https://www.rd.com/article/piqued-my-interest/

Appreciate the tube advice and grammar correction. I will pass on this mystery tube lot. They must have sat all weekend at the guy's yard sale for a reason.

Looks like you've got dogs-and-cats there. Some of the tubes would undoubtedly be useful like 6BA6, 6SC7, and perhaps a 12AT7 or two, but others like 3BZ6 were only used in older series string TV sets. 2050 is a thyratron which is great if you have a metronome or a jukebox that uses one; otherwise it doesn't have much use. CE-206 is a half wave mercury vapor rectifier used in some military and industrial equipment which might be difficult to get rid of in an environmentally sound manner considering how touchy people are over mercury these days.

One thing you have to be careful of with tube stashes like this is, the tube in the box may not be the one that came in it originally. Tubes in high reliability equipment were periodically changed for preventative maintenance, and if the old tube was still good, it was often stuffed in the box and put on a shelf for a spare. A new tube should look clean and shiny inside and out, have good paint and markings, and of course the brand on the tube should match the box. If you see a dusty old tube with faded paint or brown or white staining inside the glass, or the tube brand doesn't match the box, then you've got somebody's used "pull." Because they may be getting near the ends of their lives, "pulls" are worth considerably less than NOS tubes.

Without knowing if the tubes are new or pulls, and a list of tube numbers and quantities--so I could then see if they'd be useful for any equipment I own or am likely to work on--my "best offer" would be to tell the seller to give me $20.00 to take the tubes and get rid of them for the seller.

Thank you Chris. One lesson that I have learned on this site is sometimes the old tube was put in the new tube's box after replacement by a technician. I am sure some rolling of new tubes took place during troubleshooting as well.

Since the tubes would have to be shipped I doubt the seller would want to go through with a -$20 deal.

Most tube lots you run across these days contain significant numbers of relatively worthless series string TV tubes. In order to be worthwhile, there needs to be mostly types found in radios or other equipment that the buyer actually owns and intends to keep.

I think that someone who only occasionally needs a tube for replacement in something they are working on or wants a spare set of tubes for a radio they intend to keep, would be better served by purchasing only the specific tubes they need from one of the tube dealers who supplies known good tubes. If you buy a bulk lot of 100 tubes, and only ever end up using 5 or 10 of them, that's not really helpful.