PFLUEGER Spinning 617 or 619

[dbrinkley]

Do any of you know the origin or a location of either of these two Pflueger open faced spinning reels? I would like to purchase either/both. Maybe they were primarily distributed in Europe? Japanese manufactured for sure.

I appreciate each of you and what this group provides.

[kyreels]

I see similar reels in the Pflueger 1971 catalog where it introduces the International series starting with 622-643 models. I could not find a 617-618 in any of our lists of Pflueger models. I did see one earlier Japanese model but not similar.

[Midway Tommy D]

I have never seen or even heard of those two models in the Pflueger brand. They must have been fairly obscure since neither of them are mentioned in Ben Wright's last book.

I wonder if they have a connection to Noris Shakespeare?

[Nick in NY]

....No where does the scimatic note they're pfleuger!

[dbrinkley]

So, my thinking is that there were reels distributed outside of the US by 'Pflueger' post acquisition by Shakespeare. These maybe were manufactured by Omari or another Japanese company that Shakespeare was dealing with early on. I have these two documents. Notice that one includes 'international' in the title of the pamphlet. The first language during the reel descriptions is English. On the other there is no mention of International but the first language is German. Let me also say that I have all of these reels but three--the 615, 617 and the 619. I purchased all of them from outside of the US. Here are photos to show the Pflueger brand reference. I apologize for not fully representing context in my previous post.

[dbrinkley]

Here is a shot of some of the 500's. The above literature doesn't mention the 540 but it exists too.

[Midway Tommy D]

That documentation sheds a whole new light on your situation and query. Pflueger offered a huge line of Internationals that were made in Japan throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s.

As I mentioned earlier they were most likely in conjunction with Noris Shakespeare. Noris Shakespeare Ltd of Japan, & of England, along with Omori, were most likely all part of that conglomeration. About the only way to pin it all down would be if someone has multiple original old Pflueger catalogs from that time frame. Looks like you have a good start with the one you have, anyway.

[Nick in NY]

Wow... That's interesting! It came down to a catalog...l assume Pfleuger was taking examples of other makers reels and putting it out there... looking for the next Mitchell 300! Penn had a 1/2 dozen Japanese/Asian made spin reels as well. Mike Popovich who's since passed had a few spinning reels that never went into production... Very interesting. Another angle to the hobby.