They are televisions from another era, replaced by the flat screen, high-resolution displays of the modern era. Yet cathode-ray tubes are still surprisingly in demand.

The moment he saw pictures of the grubby old televisions for sale, Shaan Joshi knew he had to have them. Joshi, a game developer and writer from central Florida in the US, immediately paid up: $2,500 (£1,900) for 10 cathode-ray tube (CRT) TVs. Chunky boxes with thick glass screens. Relics from another time. Wi-fi connectivity? Apps? Forget about it. These things produced a glow and sound from an earlier era.

These TVs weren't any ordinary analogue displays though. They were professional video monitors, or PVMs. The kind of sets that once furnished hospital labs, hooked up to very expensive equipment. Broadcasters also used to have huge numbers of them. Today, PVMs light up the dreams of certain die-hard retro gamers.

Joshi is part of a small group of people who scavenge for vintage TVs like this. They are looking for boxes with nostalgia-triggering picture quality. "Being tapped into the scene gives you a pretty good competitive edge," he says. "If you know enough people."

A contact had sent him a link to the CRTs for sale on eBay. Minutes after he'd bought the sets and excitedly told an online group he's part of, someone messaged him. "Hey," the person said. "Do you want to go split on this stuff?" Joshi thought about it for a moment. The TVs were 200 miles away in southern Florida. If this person helped – and the TVs were OK – he'd get half his money back, and potentially even some help hauling the hefty sets back home. As long as this total stranger was as good as their word. He sent his reply: "Sure."

So why do Joshi and people like him go to such lengths to get their hands on these ancient TV boxes?

Cathode-ray tube technology is more than 100 years old. It was invented in 1897. The first commercial TV made with a CRT was released in Germany in 1934. The technology relies on heating up a negatively charged electrode, or cathode, at one end of a vacuum tube to release electrons, which shoot in a beam towards a screen coated in microscopic phosphor dots. These dots fluoresce when excited by the electron beam, producing points of light on the other side. Early models had just one electron gun and could produce monochrome images. Later versions used three electron guns to excite red, blue and green dots, creating a colour picture.

For decades, it was this technology that allowed families around the world to watch their favourite TV shows together in their living rooms. CRTs also got hooked up to computers, displayed the paths of aircraft on radar screens and enabled doctors to view the intricacies of their patients' bodies. Hundreds of millions of CRTs were made and sold over the years.

Then, in the late 1990s, flat-panel TV screens appeared on the consumer electronics market. By the 2010s, they offered much bigger displays than the old CRT TVs – but at a far lower cost – and, crucially, they were a lot lighter. Soon, obsolete CRTs began piling up in waste mountains.

Today, CRTs are still in demand among a growing community of people who value their unique attributes. Some people even prefer to watch contemporary TV shows on an old CRT. Plus, these bulky devices also have ongoing industrial and military uses. And the fans of '80s and '90s video games who adore CRTs say it's the way those games were meant to be played. With fuzzy pixels, and graphics that have darkness and depth.

PVMs are, for some of those gamers, the greatest prize of all, given their high picture quality and wide range of connectors, making it easy to plug in their favourite console and jump back through time. To such aficionados, nothing is ever likely to surpass an old TV's sturdy form – or its warming glow.

Years ago, Joshi had heard about people who sourced PVMs from recycling companies and TV studios that were discarding their old kit. But that was much more common a decade or so ago, before these devices became quite so coveted by the retro gamer community. By the time he came across the PVMs for sale in 2023, it was extremely rare to find a large collection available. That's why he jumped on the eBay listing. And why he took a four-hour drive with an internet stranger, all the way to Miami, to find out what he had bought.

"We immediately hit it off," recalls Joshi. "We chatted the whole way down about what sets we had, our favourite monitors."

Eventually, the pair reached Miami, rented a truck, and headed to a small warehouse in a quiet suburb of the city. The building was nestled in an anonymous little strip of business units.

The guys........

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