Ten Dollar Reels

[Retropeche]

Over the years I have been lucky enough to buy some servicable reels for very little money. They might not be cosmetically attractive, but they catch fish.

The first reel is a Mitchell half-bail that I found at an online auction. The reel is perfectly servicable other than the bail spring is not as strong as it should be. I use it on a built cane Mk. IV carp rod of the same period.





Another Mitchell, this time found in a charity shop is a 1954 ish with the slow oscillation. This one goes on the same period built cane Mk. IV Avon rod.





I came across a Shimano Bantam on ebay dot com that had been reduced to a $9.99 BIN and the shipping cost was not too expensive either. Until I can find the real thing this reel is pretending to be an ABU Record 2500 on a 1940's built cane spinning rod.





Another internet bargain was a French SAP 702 reel. I have a half-bail 701 from 1948 on a 1944 salmon spinning rod and this is the full bail version from the mid 1950's. I am looking at getting a similar spinning rod to pair it up with.







Have you acquired any bargains to show us?

[Richard Lodge]

Those are great finds. Thanks for sharing these. I have always liked the idea that there are some great, fishable reels (or fishable with a minor repair or cleaning) out there for short money ($10, as you say). One of the reels I found long ago at a flea market got me hooked on collecting reels. It was a Meisselbach Allright #130 in very good condition (once I cleaned the grime off and took off the tangled monofilament line) I plucked out of a barrels of reels for $10. I wasn't sure it was worth the money at the time, but once I researched it, cleaned it up and admired what a neat reel I had found that was pushing a century in age, I knew I had made a good find.
Richard

[Retropeche]

This qualifies as a ten dollar reel even though if only cost 5 dollars. The reson being that I bought another at the same price a few months later and swapped a few parts around to make one reel better than the other.



Like many French reels this one has shed most of its paint. It is a Pezon et Michell luXor Relax. The French call them a capot meaning hood, but it differs from most closed face reels in that the rotor rotates and the bail arm is inside it.



To cast you have to trap the line with your index finger, back the rotor off to clear the pick up from the line, activate the switch on the rotor to disengage the pick up and cast. Not as simple as the ABU reels.

The reel was designed by Paul Mauborgne like all the other P & M fixed spool reels. This was his last design before his death and was retailed in the 1970's. After Mauborgne died his heirs broke off the relationship with P & M and marketed the same reels under their own brand of crAck. All the luXor reels had been made for Mauborgne and then shipped to Pezon et Michel for boxing and distribution. They took the new company to court in France and the States, but lost. P & M then had to find themselves new reels to sell.

The Mauborgne designed reels shared similar if not identical gear trains. They lack the sophistication of other French reels so when P & M had to find a new designer you would think that they would offer an upgrade on their old luXor reels. They didn't. The new range bombed while the old luXors, now crAck range, soared in popularity.

This was the latrr crAck model