Those were interesting and exciting times. First TVs. First transistor radios we could carry around with us. That is how I got addicted to audio. Now a larger TV is pretty much "meh".
Indeed they were.
We lived in cottage country and cottages were usually the repository of both vacuum tube TVs and radios that had served their purpose in the family home. In the early 1970s, many of these old TVs and radios overstayed their welcome at the cottage and were eventually delegated to our local dump ("landfill" in today's terms). As a young teen at the time, I was fascinated by shortwave listening (SWL) and fondly remember rescuing many of these vacuum tube radios from the dump. The radios came with a standard broadcast band and a few international broadcast, shortwave bands.
It was truly a magical time, the world had come to my room every night via an outside copper wire strung between my window and the old, apple tree and a handful of glowing vacuum tubes.

Be well...