Got tubes? I do. HELP!

RobB

RobB

Well-known member
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Working with my friend’s estate sale biz. We’ve emptied a 50x20ft storage unit. Here is a small portion:

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I can’t possibly list all of the amazing stuff, but there are these: 1000s of NOS tubes and I think there are hundreds more in the pile somewhere.

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I know there are a lot of expensive tubes in here, but we just don’t have the time to inventory every one. How do I proceed to sell these things?

Boxes and boxes of tubes..!!!!

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Twice I've hit an ungodly tube surplus like this. In both cases, 99+ percent of the take, however, was obsolete television and electronics tubes. I maybe pulled two dozen tubes that were applicable to guitar amps and what guys like us actually look for, and you typically don't know if it's good or bad until you go to use it (unless you have a good tester or a tech friend with one).

Go through the lot, pull anything applicable to guitar amps, THEN take the high-res pics and forward.

FYI, the best tube stash anyone in my immediate circle has pulled was HFC's Cajun Boy many years ago. Found a broken old 60s Baldwin organ someone put curbside for trash pickup. He pulled a TON of Baldwin-relabeled vintage Sylvania preamp tubes. And then put the organ back curbside for trash pickup haha  

 
The second box picture is a huge score with all the 5751's Rob! They're 12ax7 family 70mu!

I agree w @Jeff R there's probly lots of TV tubes there. Snatch those RCA 5751's tho!!

Shit after a closer look they're all 5751's with some command models in there to, I just wet myself!!!

 
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Look for 12ax7s, 12ay7s, 12at7s,  those great 5751s, and ef86 preamp tubes

Rectifiers that command high bucks are GZ34/5ar4. 5y3s, 5v4s will sell too. I+anno5 seem to give 5u4gbs away.....

Any and all guitar power tubes. 6v6, 5881, 6l6, el34, el84 and those 7189s. Also look for the odd Ampeg power tubes. There is a niche market for them. I don’t recall the nomenclature.

Shucks, cull those out and post here and I bet most will sell fast.

 
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I'd be interested in any 6550's or KT88's there might be.. :)

 
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It’s gonna take days to properly inventory all this stuff. I’ll refer you guys to the estate sale website when they’re ready for sale. Thanks for the help. 

 
Dave Scepter said:
Wow!.. that's so cool... It's like finding the hidden gold at the lost Dutchman mine
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I thought so at first until I realized how much work we’ve got: 

2500 LPs, boxes of unused MIB 1/4” tape reels, 1/4” 2-track master tapes (Deep Purple, JGarcia, tons more), NIB pre-recorded reel to reels, 45s, 78s, NIB pre-recorded cassettes (LedZep, etc) 

Reel to real decks (Tandberg, Teac), Laserdisc players, assorted antiquated high-end electronics 

Vintage 8mm projectors/cameras  

3 vintage Orange heads (2x120w and 80w)

2 vintage Orange 4x12, 1 early 80s Hiwatt 4x12  

Multiple storage cabinets (metal with clear plastic drawers) with 1000s of electronic parts (pots, chicken head knobs, capacitors  you name it)

Hundreds of boxes of 1990s (mostly still shrink wrapped) Japanese Adult books including manga, nude magazines, trading cards. Playboys, Life magazines, etc...

It’s a daunting task, to say the least, but I need the work. It’s amazing opening boxes as we’re organizing piles and seeing what’s next to pop up. This guy was a hoarder, but the most anal retentive hoarder I’ve seen. Some of this stuff dates back to the 1940s and most of it is in pristine shape. Unreal...

 
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RobB said:
I thought so at first until I realized how much work we’ve got: 

2500 LPs, boxes of unused MIB 1/4” tape reels, 1/4” 2-track master tapes (Deep Purple, JGarcia, tons more), NIB pre-recorded reel to reels, 45s, 78s, NIB pre-recorded cassettes (LedZep, etc) 

Reel to real decks (Tandberg, Teac), Laserdisc players, assorted antiquated high-end electronics 

Vintage 8mm projectors/cameras  

3 vintage Orange heads (2x120w and 80w)

2 vintage Orange 4x12, 1 early 80s Hiwatt 4x12  

Multiple storage cabinets (metal with clear plastic drawers) with 1000s of electronic parts (pots, chicken head knobs, capacitors  you name it)

Hundreds of boxes of 1990s (mostly still shrink wrapped) Japanese Adult books including manga, nude magazines, trading cards. Playboys, Life magazines, etc...

It’s a daunting task, to say the least, but I need the work. It’s amazing opening boxes as we’re organizing piles and seeing what’s next to pop up. This guy was a hoarder, but the most anal retentive hoarder I’ve seen. Some of this stuff dates back to the 1940s and most of it is in pristine shape. Unreal...
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Damn that sounds fun!.. Are you guys under some serious time constraints?.. that would be so much fun to hang out there... start off in the morning sipping coffee, play some reel-to-reels and just start organizing/listing stuff... I would definitely not rush anything as there might be some serious Treasures hidden in there

 
9-6, Sundays off. We have until the end of March, so the big stuff that will move quick will go first. The tubes will be logged at months-end by myself, will prolly take 2-3days just to inventory those. 

The decedent (from what I can gather) was studio engineer. His sister sez he repaired vintage tube gear/electronics and some overseas customers paid with boxes of Japanese naughty mags. Maybe he had plans to turn them over later? They’re mostly unopened, glossy but unused if you get my meaning. 

 
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Boy, keeping us in the loop on those tubes would be great! There's gotta be some incredible finds there!! Parts to!! 

I think it's incredibly exciting!!! But I'm a tube freak!! 

P.S. here's a sight with a bunch of tube info!

http://www.tubedata.org/

 
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Holy Smokes Rob I think your ship came in. If I wasn't over halfway across the country I would come and help sort all that out. Its like a dream for a guy like me. LOL 

I think Jake hit all the major tubes. I'm always down for any pre's that I use on a consistent basis, such as 12ax7's, 12at7's, 5751's, EF86's. 

 
Jeff R said:
n both cases, 99+ percent of the take, however, was obsolete television and electronics tubes. I maybe pulled two dozen tubes that were applicable to guitar amps and what guys like us actually look for, and you typically don't know if it's good or bad until you go to use it (unless you have a good tester or a tech friend with one).

Go through the lot, pull anything applicable to guitar amps, THEN take the high-res pics and forward.
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^^^^ This.  I've done this type of picking twice in the last three years and there are diminishing returns to unloading the whole lot by piece.

As others have said, look for the guitar-centric codes and pull those out. The 12a#7 types...pull them all. This includes 5751/7025/ECC8# types...pull them all. Any power tube sets  (including EL84 variants 7189/CBQ5), pull those and keep boxed sets together, of course.  Early last year, I ran into a young guy who was attempting to clean out his deceased granddad's barn...a barn that doubled as a TV/radio repair shop. There were quite literally thousands of tubes in rotting and dilapidated cardboard boxes, plus nine filing cabs full of service manuals (for TVs, mostly).  I tried to make him a generous offer for the relevant (yet untested) amp tubes, but he wanted me to buy all or nothing.  So, not wanting to move a metric shit-ton of garbage to get a few nice NOS valves, I pulled out the good stuff (including a quartet of Mullard 7189), gave him some suggested asking prices and selling advice, and he gave me a quartet of NIB/NOS Amperex EL84 as a trade-in-kind for the information.  

 
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