FINDING A NEW YET OLD SPINNING REEL

I just found a reel as I mentioned here New American Rodsmith Rod and now I need a new spi... in the previous post. But after doing a lot of research on reels and checking out a surprisingly wide variety of what I was finding online at a nearby Walmart,

I ended up finding one online with a reel like I spoke about in the previous post, An Abu Garcia Cardinal, except this one is a 754 model, and will hold but a size larger and about 2 oz. heavier, coming in at about 9.6 oz. It's the same brand and series just a different and slightly larger model that holds 8, 10 or 12 lb line. The 752 model that I have holds 4 or 6 lb test line.

It's reportedly clean and in great shape and in the box with manuals with little wear and tear and works well. That's just the ticket. The seller emailed me some pics and the reel box had a sticker from Oshman's, a formerly great sporting goods store in Houston. I'll post more about the joy of Oshman's Sporting Goods stores in the 1960's through 1980's in a later post, but oh they had the cool stuff there when I was growing up and was a young man. You could find a Remington 870 at Carter's Country for a much better price but you probably couldn't see a selection of 1970's Mauser Lugers for sale. Man, they had great guns and fishing stuff at Oshman's.

And that reminded me of when I bought mine, at a Houston Oshmans store back in the mid-1980's. I'll have to look at the manual and see if it has a date on when it was made, but like taking digital photos of this stuff I write about on this blog (which I don't have time to do, barely having time to blog), I'd have to dig up the box from one of the second or third tier fishing supplies storage, located in large rubbermaid tubs in the garage.

Somewhere in the garage. And looking around for that reel box to find the year it was made is not likely to happen.

Anyway, after re-evaluating the fit of my new rod and of the smaller Abu Garcia Cardinal 752, which I found out is not heavy at all as previously reported by me but weighs in at 7.6 oz., once I found the wife's kitchen digital scale, used exclusively by her for the preparation and cooking of fine cuisine.

She abhors me weighing things like loaded guns or " soiled" fishing reels with Billy Ray to see what various ultralight pistols or reels actually weigh when loaded. Billy Ray and I do stuff like that and it is not generally appreciated by the wives when we are caught doing it.

So after re-evaluating the nice balance of the reel on my new rod, I set out looking for perhaps a new or used spinning reel that would really compliment it, hopefully at a bargain price. I stumbled across this one and it'll be on the way tomorrow.

The Abu Garcias Cardinal 754 reel I just bought actually weighs right at the same as the reels I've been checking out lately. There's a lot of reels by Garcia and Mitchell and Shimano and others that go for between about $30 and $60, and they all weigh in the 9.5 to 12 oz or more range for the 8-10-12 line weight.

I could spent many times more than what I'm spending, up to crazy amounts like $600, and still have a reel that weighs the same or less and works as well.
nomadic peoples that range through various parts of Africa, primarily Morroco.

So in any event the memory of when I got that reel finally came to me. I went with some friend at Oshman's who was looking for shoes or something and ended up liking the reel and the drag system and bought it and had it loaded up with line.

So that hopefully bodes well for this new as yet unseen reel. I've generally been pretty lucky getting nice stuff online.