Tubes, Tubes and more Tubes...

"This is from personal experience, which I don’t believe you have heard from yet."

- Evidently you haven’t read all the responses on this topic. I sold 3500+ tubes in 1 1/2 years working on them part time, he only has 500+. All one has to do is write up an inventory, see what they sold for retail & on ebay. Tubes are easy to pack & ship. Then group the lower price tubes and sell the higher priced one in singles, pairs or quads. All the tubes have to be tested with test results included for the more valuable ones. All low value tubes can be sold as a lot on Craigslist. After expenses I made just shy of 24 grand and a about 1/3 of them where used. Step one is looking up the sold value of the tubes to determine whether or not it’s worth your time.

"It is expensive to store & grade & catalog & value all your tubes to eventually sell."

- Not if one does it themselves and puts in the time.

Also, most tubes were made for TVs, not audio.

Maybe, maybe not, but some of the most sought after tubes are military & medical grade, which I'm guessing we not used for TVs.  

@ Dill - my apologies as no disrespect was intended.  I got from your experience  that you were running an on-line business of selling tubes.  This was not what I was getting from the OP and certainly not what I saw myself doing at that point in my life.  I sought out advice from a number of people in the industry, I spoke with a lot of people.  It's work, the sweat equity type, no escaping it.  Whether it's something you want to take on or not, that is where my comments were heading.  Hats off to what you were able to accomplish.

Rich 

"NOS" means never used except in your tester. Most come with original boxes, some JAN tubes do not. This term is overused and one of the tube dealers mentioned above sells "NOS in white boxes" which means test as new in white boxes. Not the same thing. NOS is like being pregnant you either is or you aint. Can be hard to tell sometimes.

Test results are no indication as to the use or lack of with a tube. With new factory tube test results varying up to 20% or greater with these old stock offerings it is not rare to see a lightly used tube test higher than a new tube. Further, there are a number of additional things one can do to asses the condition of a used tube. I think that life (cathode strength) tests are invaluable in this regard.

Selling old stock tubes has been my sole source of income for over 20 years and I just recently opened a 2 channel dealership. I would be happy to make an offer on these tubes, but as others have pointed out there are many variables at play and I wont give you a higher price unless I can test before making my offer.