As detailed above, NOS is a often incorrectly used term. The only tubes I ever bought that were labelled NOS that I thought were possibly the real deal were Telefunken ECC803 tubes. The boxes they came in were the brightly colored boxes typical for these Telefunken tubes. When I carefully tried to open the box, the end flaps practically crumbled. They were very old and fragile at that point. It appeared that the tubes in those boxes had been in there for a very long time, which greatly added to the credibility of the claim of NOS status.
Tubes, Tubes and more Tubes...
So I inherited probably over 500+ vintage tubes 9 pins, Octals, some strange ones that look like 16-pins and some 4-pins that look like mini 300Bs. They are from an old radio station that used them in their equipment and also in radio repair in the 50's through the 70's. Once they switched over to new equipment in the 70s and 80s all the tubes were all shelved. I've pulled the ones I can use for my equipment (6SN7GTBs, 12SN7GTB,s 6BQ7As, 12AU7,12AT7s) but I'm not sure what to do with the rest. They are 98% NOS in boxes, Mostly RCA but lots of Tung-Sol, Amprex and PhilipsECG with the used ones marked. I was thinking of listing them on Reverb but... It's soooo many it would take years and most are singles. What would you do?