 Hey guys welcome back to Retro Tech. Now today I've got a brand new episode of comments and questions. I thank everybody for going and commenting on last few videos and asking great questions. I've just been super swamped with getting things ready for the convention schedule as well as doing my normal repairs that I've got in the shop right now. So it's really been backed up and I've really had a hard time getting direct responses to a lot of questions lately. So I appreciate you to keep up coming and I'll do my best to get caught up on a couple of episodes of comments like we are today. So let's get started. The first comment I've got here is from Milo and Milo was the owner of the PGM that I serviced. You saw in the last repair video the PGM 100P model and he sent me a comment after the video. It says enjoy just seeing the PC Trenachon video and then he started asking me who are you using to ship PVMs on eBay for $85 cost. He wants to sell a 20 inch model he owns and he needs to get a bunch of baby stuff because congratulations Milo is about to have his first baby but there's a lot of cost in America that goes with that. So he wanted to know if I would pack his PVM like the pro style and ship it for him but there's just a couple issues with that and I kind of wanted to talk a little bit briefly on CRT packing and shipping because I've done so many conversations on that in the past. I'll link some videos in this but I'm going to go through and give you a couple tips really fast here and the first tip is going to be to find a Fedek or you know find your trusted shipper and that could be different depending on where you live or where you are for me the best shipper in my area and I've tried them all is FedEx. I'm not saying that's the best for you and your area but I'm going to go through some benefits for FedEx but the first thing I want you to do if you're using FedEx or pretty much any major shipper like that make sure you go to a store that is a direct FedEx store kind of like the one I've got pictured here and I'm just mentioning that because there are also other stores that are not FedEx you know stores they're authorized ship centers which I've got a picture of here this is don't worry about the name because this is just a generic office front that I found online but these centers are not direct FedEx locations they are basically kind of a subsidiary that has an agreement where they're allowed to ship things ship things through FedEx and do other FedEx services FedEx comes and picks up from there but they're not an official FedEx location as far as like the actual they're not FedEx employees these are usually smaller businesses and the reason you're going to want to go to FedEx directly is they are I mean I hate to say this but when you're using these smaller businesses you're usually if you go to not the FedEx location and just the authorized dealer they're going to charge you an up charge meaning you're going to pay them more money than if you were going to the FedEx location because they are being a middleman and adding a little bit of service fee onto your rate so you're already going to pay higher generally when you go to those stores and also they're I don't want to be mean but most of the time 90% of the time they are not that good at packing items so the reason I brought up to take it to your trusted main store is if you need to get your PVM packed especially a 20 inch one I'm be honest with you guys most of the time it's going to be your best bet to go to this location and have someone like in the picture here actually pack your item okay because when they pack it they guarantee it for shipment meaning that if they pack it it doesn't matter how they pack it but they're going to pack it and guarantee that it makes it and that way your insurance is guaranteed and honestly if you don't if you don't pack a lot of these and you don't have a lot of materials normally those materials are very costly to ship these I mean you're talking about over $40 in materials alone most of the time just to properly pack a 20 inch PVM on your own $40 in materials so most of the time if you go directly to FedEx they already have the materials they don't charge as much as if you just went and bought the materials yourself and then packed it on your own they're actually going to pack it for you give you a little bit better of a deal now I'm not saying that it won't be cheap I mean it's going to be expensive okay I've done I've let them pack 13 inch and 14 inch monitors before and they've done that for about $30 and that's everything packed ship I mean not shipping but packing and insurance is covered by that so if you go up to that larger monitor you are going to pay more but again if you don't do this normally and you just want to save you know you're not worried about saving $10 you should go there and let them pack it and of course walk in with your monitor not in a box or anything if you don't have one and say look I'm shipping this it's very fragile and it's very rare and it'll show them something that shows a recent sale that was like 800 to a thousand dollars for a PVM just bring a print off or you know pull it up on your phone and show them hey this is very expensive and then if you talk to that customer representative about how it needs to be packed you tell them that you definitely want double boxes and things like that they'll work with you and then again they'll pack it you save yourself the time and headache of worrying about packing it and also you get that guarantee that no matter what if they do end up breaking it or damaging it you're going to get paid back so I think that that's always a great thing to do is to just do that through them if you're not doing this like normally like I am a lot so the reason I want to talk about that is I get a lot of people that ask me if they could ship me their PVMs their entire PVMs and hopefully I'm working towards some things that will allow that more often in 2020 but that's kind of still up in the air and not solid enough for me to talk about yet so for now if you do end up scheduling something we need to send it for me that is probably your best way that way you can guarantee it gets here in one piece as well as you're not going to run into any problems with insurance and you don't have to have to waste your time with trying to pack it now one of the tips I'm going to give you here is to set up an account with FedEx when you go into that store talk to the customer service representative and say hey I've heard maybe you guys have an account setting or account setup available because you don't have to have a business you can really just set it up under your own name and you don't even have to do a lot of shipping or anything but that account what you do is you get an account number and you go into the FedEx store and they let you use that account number and they charge you based on that account number which you link a credit card to but that account number will sometimes save you up as much as 10% off your total charge for packing and shipping and so that's like a great deal that you're just going to get just for using an account number so I say if you're going to ship it with FedEx go in set up the account number to save 10% because honestly it's not $85 like Milo had said it was $85 that was the cost for shipping a 14 inch when you get into those larger 20 inch monitors you're going to get over $100 in just the charge to ship it because the boxes are generally going to be at least 24 inch cubes maybe a little bigger and they're going to weigh over 70 pounds most of the time generally right at about 80 pounds so you're getting into that higher more expensive tier of shipping rates now I've got a little fact that I pulled up here on the screen and it just says with FedEx ground services you could ship packages that weigh up to 150 pounds however with FedEx home delivery services there's a limit of 70 pounds the reason I bring that up is because the 70 pound limit if you're shipping an over a 20 inch monitor it's going to be packed and it's going to weigh over 70 pounds I've not been able to pack it properly and get it to weigh under much really under 80 pounds they generally come to be right at about 80 pounds and when it goes over 70 pounds sometimes they won't even offer depending on what state it is to do the home delivery meaning they if you if you have a customer that buys a pvm from you and they want to get it shipped to their home they can't do that if it weighs over 70 pounds now it's not like that everywhere because sometimes it still falls under the ground but FedEx is really switching over a lot of their services to this home delivery and if so if it's not a business then they're not going to ship it over 70 pounds they're going to put that hold on it and then they won't do that but there are ways to get around that and this is what I recommend okay so this is another big recommendation probably the last thing I want to say about the shipping but if you're going to ship a large pvm don't ship it directly to the customer you're going to need to ship that to the shipping center so for example if you use FedEx and you have a customer that's in a certain city and state find the nearest FedEx location that gets deliveries and that could just ask the FedEx person at the desk to locate it so what FedEx can do then is they'll ship it directly to that other business and then your customer can go drive to that business and physically pick up the package and then leave with it and that way you're eliminating the step of the the basically that the once the package gets delivered to that shipment center well instead of it having to go get loaded onto a FedEx truck and then the FedEx driver having to manually pick that thing up put it on the truck take it off the truck and bring it to the person's house or apartment you know there could be stairs and things and you just want to avoid that's like the biggest chance for your monitor to get destroyed when it's between that window of being picked up for delivery that last step so if you can eliminate that step altogether I recommend especially if you're selling a larger one just don't even offer put it in your listing that they have to go pick it up if they have a problem with that then you know don't bid but I would definitely say that if you're going to ship a larger pvm then you'll want to make sure you just ship it to the FedEx location and let those people that buy it come and pick it up that way they avoid that whole chance to be damaged because sometimes even what could happen is somebody goes out to deliver this package and the person's not home and then they got to put the package back on the truck and try to come deliver it again the next day so you're just like trying it's just basically begging to get damaged that way but thanks Milo good luck and let's get on to some other questions so next question here is from Slim Shady and it is on the Sony PGM video and we're looking at it says could you move on to more 31 kilohertz PC monitors and CRTs and answers yes as this is all just dependent on what comes into my shop so you know most of the time I get pvms to work on here where I'm at but occasionally just like in this case I was able to get this PGM sent to me and repaired I don't currently have any CRT monitors at my shop that I own but I have been talking to some other clients and patreons and they want to bring in some other lower-end CRTs to get service that are you know just run-of-the-mill 31 kilohertz PC CRTs so as those come in of course I'll continue to work on those and we'll just have to go from there I was I had a couple follow-up questions from that video too that I wanted to stay on this was another one it was from Luck or Lulk Logan and it says I think I drill holes in the top of the case so wouldn't need a fan and I was talking again about this PGM and what you need to understand about this PGM it was specifically designed to be liquid tight so it's such a crazy locked-in case it's difficult to get a part that plastic shell that way if you spilled or had some kind of IV bag spray and splash open and get liquid all over the monitor you just wipe it off and it would be clean and there wouldn't be any problems with it you wouldn't get liquid inside the monitor and that way damage any of the electronics that was the thought and reasoning behind it however that just creates a huge shell and tunnel that just builds up heat with all those massive you know electrical processes going on inside that monitor so the fan is there to help with the heat and this monitor I didn't even mention in the video but this monitor will not even turn on without some type of a fan plugged in to the board the main board so if you unplug that fan that was attached to the shell the monitor just goes into safe mode and won't even turn on because it doesn't it turns on and turns directly off and goes into safe mode it scissors an error because the fans not plugged in and it pretty much will overheat immediately after that if it runs too long because it gets so hot inside there so you do have to have a fan there's no way of getting around it on this monitor you could drill holes to help but again you're just going to ruin that if you did that because you won't be able to find that shell again in good condition most likely and the last follow up for it was from Torodio Zeus and he said now this monitor I mentioned this monitor service we were like four hundred dollars so now this monitor is worth like 20 to 40 I'm guessing saying dollars max it only has 65 kilohertz horizontal refresh rate I would personally pass on and get a monitor with refresh rate of closer to 100 plus now that's again a performance thing it's so performance doesn't always translate into dollars and what I mean by that is the reason this monitor would be worth some money is because it's rare and it still works and so my comparison for you to kind of make you think about it now understand that like if you're looking for something that's performance based then yeah you're going to want over 100 plus refresh rate however if you want to collect your item or have some kind of nostalgic you know PGM that monitor might fit the exact need for you for whatever reason and I've got a Ferrari here pulled up and this is my semi you know let's take a look at an example of what I mean on value this is a 1977 Ferrari 308 and of course this is a very valuable vehicle at this point it's of course not my car just a picture but the reason I bring this one to your attention is this was a high performance machine it was made in 1977 and it went from zero to 60 miles per hour in over eight seconds I don't have the exact number but it took over eight seconds for this car to get to 60 miles an hour well today 2019 there are Kia's and other really low end cars that can get to 60 miles an hour in under eight seconds however this car is worth a lot more even though it pretty much performs the same speed range as maybe a Kia or some other lower end newer car and it's all about rarity and condition nostalgia and things like that because if we even look at the newer Ferraris they go less than three seconds to get zero to 60 yet we all started somewhere so there's always going to be a historical value to some of these things and that's kind of what I say you know just because this car isn't the fastest doesn't mean it's not going to be worth a lot of money and have some nostalgic value to people out there okay and so that's pretty much it for the discussion on that one I've got one last comment here and it's going back to the ebay video and that was the ebay video where I had bought the tube to replace in my bvm 14d series and the tube was advertised as new sold to me and it wasn't new it was used but just to get back to the comment from dark wolf 80s here he said ask for recent photos of course yeah if they don't deliver it come up with any excuses there's no need to continue with the uh secondly appreciate the video but I have mixed feelings about you posting sellers name publicly like that in a video I whole heartedly agree that some of the sellers are scums and need to be called out but should be called out correctly through ebay and not like this and look I I appreciate your comment and your opinion on this but um I thought about that a lot and I thought about that a lot with the other ebay people that I've you know talked about before but they're not um there's no like privates you don't get like anonymity when you buy and sell through ebay so you don't get to just sit there and say well you know just because you're scumbag buy a seller doesn't mean you should be able to hide behind the badge of ebay and um obviously there's also a huge problem with the feedback system where sellers can get a feedback negative feedback removed and sometimes without even the discretion of the buyers so the only way that uh like this this person who sold this they should not be on ebay all right if they're not going to change their tactics this seller had put things in their ad that were deceptive that was not true and it also violated many of the terms and agreements for them to sell on ebay so uh I kind of weigh the positives with the negatives and look there's no other way if people I don't want somebody to go and have the same experience but it was a nightmare thankfully I got my money back and I'm not the kind of person that has to sit around and worry about you know two or three hundred bucks being held pretty much in an account for three weeks till I can get my money back after I bought something so you know at the same time it's really frustrating but I understand that um you know you should just some people think you should just go through ebay but I'm not going to be like that because there's sometimes where if you just try you know this guy was consistently trying to go out of his way to go beyond what he was allowed to do through ebay and the funny thing is is I just got back from a long trip and I came home and on my porch was that tube box so he just straight up told the postal service I'm not accepting this package ebay still refunded me and then the package came back so now I've got the tube in my shop in a box I'm just going to sit it here for a month till this whole thing kind of blows over because I don't know what's going to happen I'm not going to reuse it or even touch it I'm not even going to unbox it for another month but he literally uh didn't accept the package and it came back to me so I this was pretty much one of the worst experiences I've had on ebay but thankfully they completely guaranteed it and the reason I did this again is I don't want people jumping in and selling retro parts for pvms and monitors if they're not educated or you know if they're going to list things as new and they're definitely not new they shouldn't be doing stuff like that if they don't know it's new they should be listening as I don't know the condition of it or whatever but it was something the only reason I bought it was because I knew I would be covered by ebay and thankfully ebay came through in the end but again if I if I run into somebody that goes over and above the means of normal business if this person had just come back to me and said hey I'm sorry please send the thing back and I'll process your refund without bringing ebay I would have never mentioned it because it would have been normal and I've had things like that happen where I buy something and I talk to the seller they immediately give me a refund and tell me to send it back to them so if it would have been that kind of a situation I definitely wouldn't have even called them out or probably made the video other than to say the tube I got was not the correct one that I thought I had bought but anyway let me know what you think if you have any more comments or questions please leave them on this or any other video I will get some more of these episodes done very soon I appreciate your patience and again thank you for watching and subscribing and I'll see you guys next time with some more retro content