They will only increase in price, be sure of that.

BUT you need to focus on the "good stuff".

I have been "stocking up" on CRT's myself lately, but space is quickly becoming a premium.

I moslty agree with what Mau1wurf1977 mentioned...focus on the "good stuff" for sure, but there is an exception sometimes. Some CRT's I have found lately and kept are not necessarily always the "good stuff", but moreso specific monitors that I have always wanted for the sole purpose of matching them to a lot my retro PC cases and OEM systems I have. For example, I just got lucky and found a Packard bell CRT to match my Packard Bell Syneria P166 system. I also found a nice little NEC multisync that matches perfectly with my NEC ready systems and a Compaq 19" behemoth to match my Compaq Deskpro system. Besides those, I try to stick with diamondtron, trinitron tubes usually in NEC, Sony, Mitsubishi, IBM and Dell flavours. And of course, if you're into retro console gaming as well....always be on the lookout for Sony (or other) true RGB CRT studio/commercial monitors. And I have to add that I have been hoarding commodore RGB monitors as well...anything I can find with a Commodore brand, I usually buy.

I want CRT for my XT till pentium 1 build.. Maybe iam using LCD for the rest of my systems. But i really dont like the idea to connect an LCD panel to a very old system. (it should only be ideal if you care about the space if you dont have)

Yes. Get the good stuff before it ends up in the trash.

I see them thrown away about a dozen per week..

I think keep a decent CRT if you have the space, and keep a spare if you can.

Not sure they will appreciate much or even hold their current value unless they are mint - the size and weight make them expensive to ship, they may not survive the journey, and it's hard/impossible to assess their condition from a distance. And mostly you can get away with LCD anyway.

Only if you can obtain them locally. Shipping charges will kill you because they are so heavy. Freight by truck may be your only option and they don't usually deliver to any location without a loading dock which means traveling to the nearest depot to pick it up. If you live in a remote location, that may not be a viable option.

I'm curious, what's the benefit of using a CRT?

Only collect the ones that people are going to want years down the road and don't collect the useless boat anchors.

SKARDAVNELNATE wrote:

I'm curious, what's the benefit of using a CRT?

In theory, they still have better response times and deeper blacks than the typical LCD. And in theory, there is no such thing as a scaler device that will make a vintage console picture appear on an LCD in quite the same way that it will look on a genuine CRT.

I sure wouldn't want to stock up on them, though – way too heavy and way too bulky. You can't even stack them and store them efficiently, unlike the typical AT or ATX case. And even the best CRT's phosphors will inevitably degrade.

I keep one CRT on hand, but it's a small one, and only because it's actually some sort of touch screen. I had trouble getting it to work for very long the last time I poked at it, though.

Jorpho wrote:

And in theory, there is no such thing as a scaler device that will make a vintage console picture appear on an LCD in quite the same way that it will look on a genuine CRT.

XRGB mini gets pretty darn close.

Naw, just haul to the land fill..

tincup wrote:

Naw, just haul to the land fill..

Or whatever local municipal e-waste facility may be available, rather. Staples (the office supply store) will take that sort of thing around here.

Then again, e-waste disposal is something of a charged topic and dumping them in one's local landfill might not be such a bad idea.

True story: Where I live there are several used PC dealers who buy pallets of last-gen hardware from big companies, banks, universities and the like, refurbish them and sell them with as little or as many stuff as you'd like for really good prices if you are in need of one or a bunch of basic office or home PCs. Naturally they do monitors too, and if you knew your stuff you could get some really awesome >20" workstation monitors for $50 or less, warranty included. Even well into the LCD era tech savvy people roamed these places in the look for large, good and cheap CRTs for graphic design and gaming.

One day these abominations appeared and spread like a virus:


These are poor man's video slot machines, pretty much. 100% off the shelf parts: a couple of industrial-type buttons, a standard coin mechanism, a computer board and a VGA monitor inside a bland wooden cabinet anyone can put together. At one point these were in every corner store and a ton of places became poor man's casinos literally overnight. It was blatant gambling, robbing the elderly from their hard-earned coin. I think they were legally disguised as 'games of skill' but 5 seconds in front of one and you could tell it was plain and simple gambling.

Naturally they didn't last very long, law enforcement made a big media show from the seizure & destruction of most of these machines. Nowadays they can still be found, albeit in minuscule numbers compared to their heyday, usually well camouflaged or in pretty remote areas.

What does this have to do with CRTs? Well they used standard VGA monitors, and the seedy people who built and sold these machines dried up the large VGA monitor market in the blink of an eye. They simply scoured the country and bought every single big PC CRT they could get their hands on, until there were no more left. Nowadays finding a CRT over 17" is practically impossible. They're all in landfills by now, from the destruction of these gambling machines and people at home tossing them in the trash. In fact the last iterations of these came with LCD monitors, suggesting that the supply dried up before they were outlawed and destroyed. If you live here and didn't get your workstation monitor itch scratched a few years ago, you're pretty much screwed now.

133MHz wrote:

True story: Where I live there are several used PC dealers who buy pallets of last-gen hardware from big companies, banks, unive […]
Show full quote

True story: Where I live there are several used PC dealers who buy pallets of last-gen hardware from big companies, banks, universities and the like, refurbish them and sell them with as little or as many stuff as you'd like for really good prices if you are in need of one or a bunch of basic office or home PCs. Naturally they do monitors too, and if you knew your stuff you could get some really awesome >20" workstation monitors for $50 or less, warranty included. Even well into the LCD era tech savvy people roamed these places in the look for large, good and cheap CRTs for graphic design and gaming.

One day these abominations appeared and spread like a virus:


These are poor man's video slot machines, pretty much. 100% off the shelf parts: a couple of industrial-type buttons, a standard coin mechanism, a computer board and a VGA monitor inside a bland wooden cabinet anyone can put together. At one point these were in every corner store and a ton of places became poor man's casinos literally overnight. It was blatant gambling, robbing the elderly from their hard-earned coin. I think they were legally disguised as 'games of skill' but 5 seconds in front of one and you could tell it was plain and simple gambling.

Naturally they didn't last very long, law enforcement made a big media show from the seizure & destruction of most of these machines. Nowadays they can still be found, albeit in minuscule numbers compared to their heyday, usually well camouflaged or in pretty remote areas.

What does this have to do with CRTs? Well they used standard VGA monitors, and the seedy people who built and sold these machines dried up the large VGA monitor market in the blink of an eye. They simply scoured the country and bought every single big PC CRT they could get their hands on, until there were no more left. Nowadays finding a CRT over 17" is practically impossible. They're all in landfills by now, from the destruction of these gambling machines and people at home tossing them in the trash. In fact the last iterations of these came with LCD monitors, suggesting that the supply dried up before they were outlawed and destroyed. If you live here and didn't get your workstation monitor itch scratched a few years ago, you're pretty much screwed now.

MAME would still like a dump of them anyways. 😉

AFAIK they are dumped, not just in the landfill sense but in the emulation sense too. 😵

133MHz wrote:

AFAIK they are dumped, not just in the landfill sense but in the emulation sense too. 😵

Okay, good. 😀

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

They will only increase in price, be sure of that.

BUT you need to focus on the "good stuff".

This even if they are broken. i'd go for the trinitrons and do research on monitiors that would work well in arcades or that are used in arcades.

I had 3 but now only 1. They take up too much room, are heavy and use a lot of electricity. Electricity rates have gone up a lot where I live. Paid $270 for it last month. 🙁