Never Pass These 5 Old Fishing Reels at a Flea Market (They're Worth a Fortune)

THE BARN FIND BIBLE: the maker marks, the stamps, the dating rules and the real sold prices, all in one place: https://barnfindbible.com A rusted steel tackle box sat on a table at a flea market outside Cresco, Iowa with $4 of masking tape on the lid. Two fellas ahead of me lifted it, saw a heap of push button reels and green spoons, and let it fall shut. Neither one took a reel out of the tray. I put my hand down in the pile, came up with the one thing in there that was small and cold and heavier than it looked, and turned it over to read the foot, because on a reel the name is not on the side everybody looks at. $310. Same $4 box. This one is not about what is out in your shed. It is about what is on a stranger's table this Saturday morning with the seller watching your hands, and the five second read that tells you whether to keep hold of it or set it back down. Every reel here is described by what it LOOKS like lying on a table, not by a brand name, because in the aisle you see the object before you ever see the word. Counting down the five old reels I never walk past, and how to read each one at six in the morning with a flashlight: 5. THE HEAP OF PLASTIC PUSH BUTTON REELS. The honest floor, said flat. Those are $2 to $10 reels, near enough every one, and there is no secret money in a common one. So why put your hand in the basket? Because when a fish house gets cleaned out every reel comes off every rod into ONE box, since everything round goes in the same box. That basket is a mixing bowl with a whole man's fishing life in it. Feeling for cold and for weight, and why thirty seconds in that pile is the cheapest thirty seconds at the sale. 4. THE LITTLE PLAIN ONE THAT LOOKS LIKE NOTHING. Small, dark, no chrome, often a fly reel with a simple click, and next to a big shiny level wind it looks like a curtain pulley, which is exactly why it is still on the table at eleven. The read: weight for its size (brass, bronze and nickel silver are heavy for how big they are), spin the spool and listen for an even dry click rather than a grind, read the FOOT because that is where the name lives on a reel, and thumb the spool edge for a ding from a drop. Most are $10 to $40 reels. 3. THE ONE WITH WOOD OR HARD RUBBER ON THE HANDLE KNOB. The fastest tell in the video, and you read it from six feet away before you ever pick the reel up. The handle knob is a clock. Wood, hard rubber and bakelite are prewar. Bright plastic with a mold seam is later. Why the era decides whether the reel is worth turning over at all, and the warning that cuts both ways, since knobs get replaced in either direction. Most prewar level winds are $25 to $75 reels, so a brown knob is not a lottery ticket, it is permission to spend four more seconds. 2. THE HEAVY SALTWATER REEL SITTING IN IOWA. Big, wide, star drag, harness lugs, and a thousand miles from the nearest tarpon, so nobody at that sale wants it and it wears a boat anchor price all day. This is where the serious money in the whole category lives. The read is size and width, then the material of the side plates, then the one that matters: saltwater corrosion is NOT honest patina. Patina is a color, salt is a texture, and pitting under the plate never comes back out. How to check it without taking anything apart on somebody's table. Honest odds said out loud, because most are $50 to $150 reels. 1. THE ONE STILL IN ITS BOX WITH THE POUCH AND THE PAPER. Number one because on a boxed reel the box and the paper are half the money, and the box is precisely what gets thrown out. The reels get kept when a tackle box is cleaned out. The carton is crushed and empty, so it goes in the trash bag, the wrench goes in a coffee can with the screws, and the folded instruction sheet goes in the burn barrel. Checking the box actually belongs to the reel, leaving the paper alone, counting the wrench and oiler and pouch, and lifting the cardboard tray. Plus the free question that costs you nothing and doubles the buy. THE TABLE ROUTINE FOR REELS, handed over in one piece between 3 and 2: read the FOOT first, because the name is stamped where it clamps to the rod and not on the side plate where everybody looks; spin the spool and listen; work the handle both ways for the click and the drag; mismatched or missing screws mean somebody has been inside it; check the spool edge and the pillars for a bend from a drop; the manners, which are to ask before you spin a man's reel and never take one apart on his table; and the buying rule, which is to buy the whole tackle box and never the one reel, because a seller prices a box as a box and the box is where the money hides. I am a picker, not a specialist, and I never put a number on somebody's reel sight unseen. Look at COMPLETED and SOLD listings for the exact mark you find, never asking prices. Tell me below the best reel you ever pulled out of somebody's tackle box, and where you're watching from. I read every single one.