Oh, it’s a 1950’s style “cathode ray”.
Psst. He was cremated. 
I do, as well as several hundred (maybe thousand) vacuum tubes. I collected tubes when I was younger and had a great display when I lived at home with my parents.
Um. Those are original prices, not current values. A 1939 RCA TRK-12 would sell for more like $10,000 today than $600.
Be careful if you start digging around in there. I likely has a condensor/capacitor or two that can shock the heck out of you even if it’s not plugged in.
Oh. Mea culpa.
If you have a Variac, you *might * be able to get away with “reforming” the caps by feeding the set greatly reduced power and slowly (like, over a period of hours or even days) nudging up the voltage until you’re at normal 110. If you don’t have a Variac, forget I even mentioned this. 
Although, if the set’s 60 years old, it’s probably simpler to just assume the caps need to be replaced.
Yeah - the picture tube. General rule of thumb is that the tube is charged up to 1,000 volts per inch - a 25" set would have about 25,000 volts lingering in the picture tube waiting to bite you. Aside from that, treat everything as it it’s live.
Oh, and you do know what a hot chassis is, right? :eek:
You don’t sound very sure of yourself with that “um”.
The more I read, the more I like my TV as-is! I swear, you guys are just saying these things to scare me! (And it’s working…)
Perform a Smoke Test. Plug-in the TV and if you see smoke the TV is bad.
Then simply replace the components that are burnt beyond reconigtion.
Seriously if you want to fix it then:
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Take the picture tube to one of the few remaining TV repair shops (see yellow pages) to test the CRT.
No sense in going further if the picture tube is bad, although it might be possible to find one. -
Get a schematic or service manual. “Sam’s” was the standard. I’ve seen Sam’s manuals on eBay. Or the TV shop might run off a copy.
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Replacement tubes are available. Like the electrolytic caps these will most likely need replacing.
A little googling and you can have an idea of the parts cost.
If it was mine, I’d take the entire 50’s vintage TV chassis out and stick a modern TV chassis in. That way you could have a retro-looking cabinet with a TV that you didn’t have to adjust the vertical hold, or wiggle the tuner to get the picture to clear up, or any of the myriad of stuff that made those old TVs so bad. But keep the old TV chassis, that way if it ever turns out to be worth $$$, you could put it back to it’s pitifu…er original self.
It was intended as more of an “ahem,” actually.
I know if I had a TRK-anything (-5, -9, or -12) in my basement, I wouldn’t be letting it go for a crummy $600. They were made only in small quantities and any unsold ones were likely cannibalized for radar parts when WW2 broke out.
I found a site which sells antique televisions. They also list prices in the $200 to $600 range. Are the 1939 RCA TRK-12 models super-rare?
I learned how to fix analogue TV sets in electronics school… but this was after the tube era. (We didn’t even study tubes! The teacher just said they operated ‘like field-effect transistors’.)
I have all my grandfather’s 1930’s-style antique electronics books, plus a copy of the 1961 American Radio Relay League handbook, and my own electronics books from school (early 1980’s), so if you got me a schematic of the set, and if I had all the right tools (oscilloscope, soldering and desoldering tools, multimeter with high-voltage probes, rubber gloves, tube tester, etc, plus a buddy always within earshot to call 911 if something went wrong), I might be able to do something, given enough study.
In reality, the first thing I’d do is look up some antique-radio or antique-television enthusiasts and let them handle it. :).
Any pre-WW2 television set is to be prized, but according to these guys, the RCA TRK-12 (Television Receiver, Kinescope, 12-inch) was the most popular set then and still the most common today. But still only about 1700 were known to be made, and today only 55 are known to exist.
That the most popular model was also the most expensive gives you an idea of who made up the TV audience at the time. The RCA 12 is a behemoth, a massive Moderne cabinet with an all-band radio and a mirror in the lid for watching the tube (which had to be built so long that the only way to install it was upright). I’ve seen one in operation (actually a Westinghouse prototype in an even bigger cabinet). It gave a very clear B/W picture with good contrast - not primitive-looking in the least.
The thing about the early sets is that they had to pack stupendous voltages - 6000, 7000 - to get the scanning mechanisms to work. The chassis are literally lethal in inexperienced hands.
It probably should be pointed out that is considered a serious faux pas in the “antique” electronics community, or worse yet, installing an aquarium, or making a planter, etc. Too, once the chassis is removed the odds of it being reunited with the cabinet at some future date are slim to none… It’s doubtful that vintage TV’s will ever be worth $$$, except for certain models, however.
Hey! You’re even local! I might be inviting you over one day - after I find that smorgasbord of parts you mentioned…
(And I’ll get on that right after I finish working my way through all the radio and television enthusiasts on the links people gave me above…) Don’t worry, it might be a year or two at the rate I’m going.
You bet! There’s a little brunette who works at the Radio Shack, and one day when she bent over to pick up a package, I thought my flyback transformer would discharge on it’s own. What I wouldn’t do to connect my high voltage tripler with her second anode socket…she’s a hot chassis, alright. 
Those prices are the original retail price of the TV sets when they were new - not the current value.
There are people who collect old TV sets so there is some sort of market for them. Maybe you could list it on eBay with a reserve price so that it only sells for at least what you are prepared to pay.
Hehe…
For the benefit of the uninitiated, I figure I ought to say what a hot chassis really is. It’s essentially a frame ground, similar to how things are wired up in a car where the frame or chassis is the electrical return to the power source. In a car, that’d be the battery. In a hot chassis TV or radio, it’s the powerline.
A hot chassis means the entire works are connected directly to the AC powerline. If the house is wired properly, the chassis will be at the neutral/ground potential of the powerline, but if anything’s reversed along the way, the entire innards of the set will be a “live wire” with 120 volts on it, just waiting to shock you.
Very dangerous to you and to any line-powered test equipment you may be using, such as signal generators or scopes.