I recently picked up a couple of 130's and was not able to find answers for a couple of things. There is a sticker I've never seen before on the spool of one.
I just noticed that none of my Sailfishers have "Made in USA" or "PAT'D" anywhere on the reel. I found this very interesting.
Lastly, I was fortunate to find a nice 3 piece spool. I just don't have a correct side plate to revert a reel to resemble 1st gen.
Did Penn make external drag for 130 during 1st gen 130 production? The catalogs just aren't clear about this. Right now I'm just assuming external drag is 2nd gen/ later because I have no docs that prove otherwise.
That spool sticker is hard to find because as soon as the reel is put in service, the sticker is either removed or wiped out by salt water. I have seen those stickers numerous times on NOS solid spool reels. They are not common but they are.
As far as the missing Patent markings markings, Penn just neglected to put it on the 130's. But the Made in USA marking is on the second logo style.
The catalogs are vague about the entire Penn 130 production run (1952 to 1969). Looks to me like they used stock renditions for most of the catalogs. They never did show external drags. I do not recall if it is mentioned on the box labels. I would speculate that the external drag version of the reel is a 1960 and later product. They did have external drags with the first logo style (If that is what you mean by first gen).
I suspect there are more first gen logo style than the later logo style.
mike cass,,, if you can't collect it, it must be food
Thank you, Mike! To clarify, I say 1st gen is 1st production year. I also assumed but wasn't sure that there were no changes in the '52-'53 model. I had no idea that there were logo changes and I need to study my prospects a little closer. i see that the lines above and below "Sailfisher" were removed.
The reel with the spool sticker is very clean and shows like a NOS model.
So it looks like there were 4 known changes in the appearance of the Sailfisher...Spool, external drag, knob shape, and logo. I don't consider handles/knobs reliable markers initially. For this model, the side plate and spool are the key points of interest for me....and thanks to your great info, the logo.
It was just the spool manufactured at the time. Many brands used this style of spool. My guess is it was the best solution for machining and assembly and the tooling was already widely available. Many were found to be problematic when more advanced fishing line began its march ahead toward monofilament. When spools began failing due to increased line compression, engineers went to work.
So, many of the original Penn spools went away and are now sought after for certain models. It took me months to locate this one. It was "new in the box". I suppose it just sat on the shelf as surplus junk for decades. Since it was "inferior" to the upgraded part, it would likely never be a replacement part...until it becomes collectible.
