vacuum tubes?

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Hello newbie here.
I tried using the search option but found nothing on the subject. Does anyone know if there are any precious metals in any type of vacuum tubes? I have loads!
 
Hi Compscrapper,

Do you have any with the numbers:
6L6GC
12AX7
EL84

I have a B & K Precision tube tester to check them with. If you're interested in selling any of these I'd be interested. Please let me know.
Thanks
 
i have thousands in boxes at the warehouse, ill have to take a peek in my spare time. but i will.
 
i took a quick peek at the boxes and turned the other way. lol there are thousands man. how big is it? or do u have a picture? it would help loads. =p
 
I had an uncle who worked on old tube equipment and saved all tubes for scrapping the different elements. He had baby food jars (each labeled with element )full of the tiny nuggets that he collected for many years.when he died, people he hadn't seen in years showed up and claimed everything and wouldn't allow access to any of the property.they rented a dumpster and threw away all the tubes,jars, and old radios & tv's and what they didn't want. they stood guard over the dumpster when me and my little brother wanted a bunch of stuff ( ? many pickup loads).It was sad , very sad.we got nothing. Anyhow, I rember seeing diagrams of what was what on the frames in the tubes. This is how my uncle knew what to save.I have been buying old radios for the tubes to be scrapped.I just need the diagrams to do this.I will have to do a massive search on the web to hopefully find such information.
 
3 leg are you talking eletronic diagrams,? I have an old sylvana tube data book, lots of specification of tubes, with pinout and biasing diagrams, but not information of consrutcion materials except somthing like aluminum screen grid.
Compscrapper I would also be interested in a few tubes, and you may find them more value as tubes than metal solutions,
 
This covers the majority of metals in most vacuum tubes.

http://www.r-type.org/static/metal.htm

The getter flash is barium and it used to absorb trace gasses.

Rectifier tubes will also contain a trace to several pounds of mercury. I have seen some very early rectifier tubes that held enough mercury to fill a large coffee mug.
 
Good source of mercury indeed.

As a matter of fact, I am needing some mercury. Anyone have a few pounds they'd part with at market price?


Lou
 
qst42know said:
This covers the majority of metals in most vacuum tubes.

http://www.r-type.org/static/metal.htm

The getter flash is barium and it used to absorb trace gasses.

Rectifier tubes will also contain a trace to several pounds of mercury. I have seen some very early rectifier tubes that held enough mercury to fill a large coffee mug.
Click to expand...
Met a fellow on Keremeos B.C. who owned a very large rectifier tube from a German submarine. It stood at least 6ft with approx 4 feet diameter having glass protrusions sticking out like an octopus. The vacuum tube had enough mercury to fill a 45 gallon drum.

The tube was used for charging the subs battery's.
 
I believe some of those tubes were made with platinum wire grids. I'm just not sure which one's. Chris ???? Anyone ???
 
I found a couple of references to platinum filaments in early tubes, both from the 1920s. They referred to long life tubes from some makers having platinum filaments the others would have the standard tungsten filaments.

I have sold many tubes from the 20s. Generally the 4, 5 , or 6 pin types. Working tubes from this era should sell for $9 to $45 each roughly and some well more than that. I doubt a tube filament weighs more than a couple grains.

Duds would be one thing but you could be smashing thousands of dollars for little in return. I have a box of duds around here somewhere and will do some testing in the spring.

A tube tester would quickly pay for itself. They are not that difficult to learn to test. Audio tubes are by far the most desirable and some will bring thousands per pair. Television tubes not so much. There are plenty of tube sellers on the web and plenty to learn.

Search the tube numbers you have to find some idea what they sell for.
 
patgspot said:
Hi Compscrapper,

Do you have any with the numbers:
6L6GC
12AX7
EL84

I have a B & K Precision tube tester to check them with. If you're interested in selling any of these I'd be interested. Please let me know.
Thanks
Click to expand...
hello my name is darrell and i have recently taken some vacuum tubes from a possibly pre,, world war one radio, i did so because even though the radio powered on and workedit was in such a state that a restoration wasnt possible. however since it worked im guessing all these tubes are good if not cosmetically then functionally so. im putting this here because i have at least one numbered 6L6GC. is it desirable? my email is bludshedtears@gmail
 
I stumbled past an East European website that itemised all the valuable metals to be found in all the various Russian/Soviet electronic devices. In single quantities it was not much but if you had a box of some parts that contained gold it was more than was wasted in Western devices. A few of the very large radio output tubes had tens of grammes of silver but the collectible value if you find such a tube would be 10 or 100 times as much.
 
bludshedtears said:
possibly pre,, world war one radio
one numbered 6L6GC
Click to expand...
The 6L6 is a beam tetrode, and the patents are from around 1932, the underlying pentode structure was invented in 1926 so the tube is unlikely to predate the first world war.

There are collectors that will pay more for a complete radio especially if functioning as a restoration project rather than spare parts.
 

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