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Mitchell Fishing Reels - collecting old reels
Mitchell fishing reels are the most sold worldwide: more than 16 millions up to now!. The actual reel making activity started in the 40s' by Leon Carpano and Charles Pons who originally founded the company as drill and watches parts maker in Cluses, in the (now) French Alps (Savoy) in 1927 (Carpano & Pons). As I said, it was during the II World War that they started producing fishing reels for other companies (e.g La Canne A Peche of Angers and Au Pecheur Ecossais of Paris, actually two tackle-shops which had their own fishing reels models). It was because of this collateral experience that a company engineer, Maurice Jacquemin, found a solution for the typical problem of the tangling of the line on those models: the fishing reel housing was made in the carachteristic oval shape with black casing and the internal mechanism was prefectioned. The first Mitchell fishing reel patent was registered in 1950 under number 969.584.
The success of that first Mitchell fishing reel, the "300" was so overwhelming that the company kept making them. It is not known why the name "Mitchell" was used, probably for private and commercial reasons (the death a relative named Michel and the copyright on this name -" Michel" - being already taken by the other French company Pezon & Michel). By 1953 a larger, salt-water model was started. By 1957 numbers were added to the names of Mitchell. In 1966 the 10'000'000 reel was produced while the production peeked with 12'000 reels per day in 1972 When Charles Pons died in 1965, the story becomes more a business saga with splitting of company divisions, buyers, share holders and so on. However, it's important to know that the company Garcia became a major stock holder in 1974, hence the naming "Garcia on those reels. Today, Mitchell is part of family of leading fishing tackle owned by Pure Fishing Co.
TIP!Serious collectors, go into real details. Not only the actual conditions are important for the value of the old item but of course the period, production number and make are of paramount importance.So for instance, you should know when the reel you own was built and in order to learn that you must know what kind of mechanism is used. I found that a good webpage and website for this kind of information is this one:
a Mitchell Fishing Reels Collector website.
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