I wish I had known about TV tubes back when I was a young scrounger in the mid-1980s. I used to find carcasses of old tube TV sets out on the street. I'd pick through them looking for types I knew, like 12AU7, 12AX7, 6CG7 and so on. I could have scored all kinds of good stuff for free. Oh well. At least I got these 12HL7s for really cheap.
I'm 67, didn't have many toys growing up, but my 20+ aunts and uncles (mom and dad each had 9 siblings) would give me their old radios and TV's. From the age of 8 to 20 I was dismantling and collecting parts. Every garbage day I'd scour the neighborhood for TV's, consoles, etc being discarded, as well as free wood to make stuff. Dad would let me shoot the picture tubes with his rifle, he didn't want me to have those to break. I didn't go into electronics purely (embedded systems and firmware) but those years ripping down tube equipment brought me back to this hobby in retirement! Except now I'm trying to actually learn something. In my 20's I had crates of tubes, I think they wound up at the Goodwill somewhere along the way.