Favorite Vintage stuff that just hangs around.

[reetpleat]

Vintage things that are still around. of course, buildings, as they are too expensive to replace. And of course, stuff in museums, collections, or being restored. But what about those vintage things that just seem to still be around by accident?

Growing up around gas stations, tire shops, and machine shops, i know that a lot of equipment is so good that they just keep using it. I have seen stuff as old as 1900 still being used.

As a real estate agent, I go into basements and sometimes thee is a calendar on the wall, or maybe an old advertising thermometer from the 40s stuck on a nail and just left alone day in, year out.

Do you ever go into a store in your town and see some old product that never sold and just lurks around?

What is your favorite vintage things that just seem to hang around.

 

[davestlouis]

Being in the funeral business, we save EVERYTHING. We have a box of pencils that must date from the 1970s...most of the funeral homes advertised on them were sold years ago. We also have a bronze casket in the selection room that has been there for years, at the value price of $8495. We also have every file since the 1890s, including meeting minutes and blueprints for buildings that were razed 30 years ago. I found a police report from 1942 for the theft of a small safe, and embalmers licenses from the 30s, still neatly stored.

 

[Yeps]

My dorm has a steam heating system that has been here just about forever (the building was built in 1946, but I am not sure about the heating.) I guess it works, sort of.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I buy up all those old stock products when I see them. (Anyone need some vintage flat brown cotton shoelaces? I had to buy a whole box of them to get the one pair I needed.)

The best example I can think of, though, is movie theatre projection booths. There are still thousands of vintage projectors grinding away in old downtown/neighborhood picture houses, some of them dating back to the dawn of the talkie era. I first learned to do projection on such machines -- if properly maintained like any fine precision machinery, they can last forever.

(We don't have them where I work now, though. The last owner the place had before the renovation went thru the booth with a sledgehammer and smashed everything to make sure it could never be used again...)

 

[Fletch]

I don't get it. Did he not want it to fall into the hands of any competitors?

 

[Tomasso]

Anyone need some vintage flat brown cotton shoelaces?

Are you kidding! Mr.Chevalier dreams about those.

 

[Tomasso]

The last owner the place had before the renovation went thru the booth with a sledgehammer and smashed everything to make sure it could never be used again...)

What a genius. :eusa_doh:

 

[LizzieMaine]

I don't get it. Did he not want it to fall into the hands of any competitors?

That's exactly it. The place was bought from the original owners by the people who run our local Octoplex. They were keen not to have any competition, and Sledgehammer Bob saw to it that there wouldn't be. The local paper sniffed out what was going on, though, and hounded the state antitrust investigators into doing something about it, and they were forced to sell to the owner who did the renovation. We got a brand-new booth out of the deal, all shiny and German, but I'd still rather have the old Vitaphone-era Simplexes.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

Ephemera. Namely magazines and sewing patterns. These are usually things that run their courses and then get tossed. I am grateful for the "hoarders" of the past that we have these things today

 

[Widebrim]

(We don't have them where I work now, though. The last owner the place had before the renovation went thru the booth with a sledgehammer and smashed everything to make sure it could never be used again...)

Reminds me of how in 1958 the French left those African colonies that did not want to be part of the French Union: they literally ripped out the wall telephones out of the government buildings that they were vacating...

 

[Widebrim]

You want vintage? You should have been in the military in the late-1980s. We were still using WWII-era helmets, helmet liners, pistol belts and holsters, M-1911 .45 pistols (new ones of which had not been manufactured in years), M1 Korean-era bayonets and mess kits, Jeeps, and (at least in one fort that I was at) M-1943 bunks. None of those are used any longer (except maybe the bunks), but .50 machine guns (some of which I wouldn't doubt go back to 1937, when the services adopted them) are still very much around.

 

[vitanola]

My dorm has a steam heating system that has been here just about forever (the building was built in 1946, but I am not sure about the heating.) I guess it works, sort of.

A close friend of mine was granted the honor of a dormitory room on the Lawn at the University of Virginia in his senior year. These "Lawn Rooms" date back to the 'Twenties and so of course he had no trouble with the heating system, such as it was, save KEEPING THE OPEN FIREPLACE FED, as the rooms in these historic Jefferson-designed structures had never been fitted with central heating, and are preserved as historic monuments.

 

[LizzieMaine]

A lot of less-prosperous public school districts will also hold onto stuff long after it's passe elsewhere. My first-grade class (in 1969) still had twenties-era wooden desks bolted to the floor, complete with inkwell holes, and nearly a decade later, in my tenth-grade world history class, we were issued a textbook published in 1937. (I wonder how that business in Spain worked out?)

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

A lot of less-prosperous public school districts will also hold onto stuff long after it's passe elsewhere. My first-grade class (in 1969) still had twenties-era wooden desks bolted to the floor, complete with inkwell holes,

Around the same time period (1969-70) I briefly attended a private school and we had those desks too!

And while I'm on the subject, when I was in elementary school in the early '70s (this time it was a public school) every classroom had a record player that could play 16, 78, 45, and 33 rpm records. Externally they looked like a 40's, '50s vintage record player but I later learned they were solid state made in the '60s, early '70s. I would like to find one of those record players but I don't know who made them.

 

[vitanola]

The largest producers of those sturdy old classroom phonographs were the Newcomb and the Rheem (Califone) companies.

The Newcomb units have the edge on quality over the Califones.

These portables are yet today popular with record collectors.

 

[anon`]

Combines and tractors. Sure, there are lots of new ones out there, but drive around parts (of the US, at least) were massive commercial agriculture isn't practical and you still see dozens of machines in use in any given area that go back to the '50s and beyond.

Portland's Benson Bubblers.

One of the two (and for first the 24 years of my life, only operating) gas stations in my hometown still has the metal horseshoe sunk into the ground next to the building by the old air pump, for those pesky split-rim wheels.

On the topic of gas stations, kitty-corner across an atrocious five-way intersection from the one above is the old Gasoline Alley garage. The building (whitewashed and wooden, complete with sign) is still standing, along with at least one of the old pumps. Unfortunately, it's long since out of business.

The old T&R and White Satin Sugar (later White Stag and now Made In Oregon) signs. The former is now sadly defaced by Phoenix Inn & Suites.

Speaking of old desks: my desk in 6th grade (1994) was old enough to have an inkwell, as did a few dozen others in my elementary school. No pre-war textbooks, however!

Not really applicable to this thread (it's technically in a collection now) but interesting nonetheless: my cousin inherited his father's (my uncle's) Winchester Model 12, which he picked up back in the '70s or '80s, I believe, still in the original box and packed in the factory Cosmoline. It's still packed in Cosmoline, sitting in the box.

Also straying a bit outside of the scope of this thread, but old and abandoned timber towns, out in the middle of nowhere and forgotten by both time and man, slowly being reclaimed by the forests. Rather ironic, don't you think?

...M-1911 .45 pistols (new ones of which had not been manufactured in years)... .50 machine guns (some of which I wouldn't doubt go back to 1937, when the services adopted them) are still very much around.

No doubt they're still using "original" M2s (at least, as original as you can be seven decades on), but what's this about 1911s? Do you speak only of the "original" Colt-made specimens, or as an entire class? Because Browning's .45 ACP design has been in continual use for 99 years now, in some capacity or another!
Heck, by now I suppose you could almost even call the AR platform vintage, couldn't you?

 

[WideBrimm]

Vintage? How about NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINES! First published in 1888, some people (myself included) keep on saving them virtually forever I'll bet that literally millions of people have them stashed away!

 

[Dr Doran]

Vintage? How about NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINES! First published in 1888, some people (myself included) keep on saving them virtually forever I'll bet that literally millions of people have them stashed away!

Several years ago, the Journal of Irreproducible Results predicted a continental shelf sinking problem precisely because of the storage of National Geographic magazines in garages:

http://www.jir.com/geographic.html

 

[Dr Doran]

My first-grade class (in 1969) still had twenties-era wooden desks bolted to the floor, complete with inkwell holes, and nearly a decade later, in my tenth-grade world history class, we were issued a textbook published in 1937. (I wonder how that business in Spain worked out?)

First of all -- the truth is out. You are only 7 years older than me.

Second -- the Spain troubles didn't turn out well. Hate to tell ya.

Francisco Franco won, Juan Carlos came into power.

 

[WideBrimm]

Several years ago, the Journal of Irreproducible Results predicted a continental shelf sinking problem precisely because of the storage of National Geographic magazines in garages:

http://www.jir.com/geographic.html

Good article. I cannot resist. I MUST immediately print out a copy of this only slightly exagerated article to keep with my stash of National Geographics in the basement. :eusa_doh: