According To You: Vintage “Not-Automobiles” We Love

Personally speaking, learning from others has always been a big part of my life. The years I spent in various industries made me a better person, and my time here at Hagerty Media feels like the culmination of this effort. I learn something new every day in this job, and many times that comes directly from the comments section of our stories.

Learning from others (in an entertaining fashion) is one of the missions of the According To You series. Last week I asked about vintage “not automobile” items that you are passionate about. The feedback I received was beyond reassuring, as we all have things we care about to the same extent as automobiles. So without any further ado, let’s get right into it.

Musical Instruments

stewdi: l have my dad’s 1929 Conn tenor sax, which he played for decades until it wore out for the fourth time! He was a consummate musician, and I pay him tribute by displaying the sax on the back seat of my ’53 Studebaker Regal Starlight Coupe at car shows. He bought a ’53 Studebaker new and two more Studes (both Hawks) after that. Drove them exclusively until 1968!

HRC: 1982 Fender Strat and 1983 Fender USA Tele, 1986 Yamaha BB1000s bass. They’re not going anywhere!

gli48: How about a late-‘60s Fender Villager 12-string, ‘76 Fender Stratocaster, and a 1916 Colt Black Army 1911 I inherited from my grandfather.

Mike L: I’m a musician who plays a rare model trumpet that was built in 1951. New instruments are good, but some vintage instruments are incredible.

RobH: While not vintage to young folk, I have a 1981 Stradivarius trumpet—it isn’t perfect and may not be worth much more than I paid new, but it has a tonne of sentimental value!

DUB6: My 1966 P-Bass was played almost constantly well into the ’90s until I was told that it might be worth more than my house (it isn’t). It now hangs on a wall of music stuff in my garage office and only comes down every so often to be dusted, slapped a few times, and then put right back up.

Desmond G: It’s strange to think of this stuff as “vintage” now, but if we’re going by 30 years or so, my Mesa/Boogie Maverick 2×12 and my Fender LE Jaguar qualify, while my Mesa/Boogie Nomad 55 2×12 combo amp and Gibson R7 are close behind.

Even my Gibson Custom ‘62 LP/SG reissue is 20 years old now, and my Mesa/Boogie Stiletto Deuce Stage II head is of a similar age. Oh, and my Maxon AD9 and FL9 pedals (made with NOS Panasonic bucket brigade components) are 20 years old too. Got a couple of old RCA tube manuals around here, and a strobe tuner probably from the ‘70s or so.


52WASP: I guess the oldest thing I use regularly is a 1936-vintage DoAll 36″ bandsaw. The old girl tips the scales at just over a TON. Follow that up with a couple of Rockwell drill presses (can’t have just one!) from the sixties maybe? Woodworking tools (hand tools) from the late 1800s up through the seventies. And a set of Bose 901’s just waiting to be set up.

George P: I have a man-and-a-half timber saw that dates from the 19th century, a large number of woodworking planes from the ’20s and ’30s, and two hand saws that date from the ’20s. I have a Remington .22 that dates from the ’20s or ’30s, and two Mauser K98s with ’43 build dates. I bought my stereo new in the early ’90s; the speakers are Definitive Tech. I own one Kay guitar, definitely more than 80 years old and a Harmony Sovereign from the ’60s. I still have the first SLR I ever bought; a 1969 Praktica Nova 1B. I have two German table lamps that are at least 75 years old. Then there are the antique store “finds.”

Audio

Lee C: Lots and lots of vintage radios, including a Marantz 18 in the living room and a Zenith Transoceanic in the shop. And, they all work great.

dmctag: Old 1969/70 cars, Vintage stereo Altec Lansing Stonehenge 1 speakers and Marrantz reciever.

DAVID O: Yes! I’ve got a pair of the Altec Valencia speakers. I wish I had bought all four at the time when I purchased them used in 1981 from my friend’s brother. They still rock! (He has since offered to buy them back from me…. nope)

Jim66: My favorite old item is/are four Bose 901 speakers with the original Bose 1801 800-watt RMS amplifier. Probably why I have hissing in my ears now.

Gary B: Got some vintage Polk Audio speakers that have been working great for over 20 years. I pulled a 15-year-old desktop computer, put Linux on it as a joke, and found it became highly functional again.

Gayle M: Besides my old Camaros, Vette, and Model A, I still have my ’73 JBL Lancer 55 speakers which still sound great but now comprise the rear speakers of my big home stereo. BTW, I had to sell my ’65 442 to get those JBLs at a great discount, only $269 each! And I still have my ’65 Guild T-100 first guitar!

Joe R: The oldest car I own is a 2015 Jeep. I live old cars and trucks vicariously through Hagerty online. But radios, there is something to behold. I have a restored 37-650 Philco, a Spartan 581X, an RCA console from 1950, and a couple of Philco radios from the late 40’s I’m currently restoring. And books…Military and Aviation, a couple of hundred. Let’s not get started on vacuum tubes…

Mert S: I still have my vintage Bose 501 and 301 speakers. They are working so much better than my newer speakers, and my record albums never sounded better.

Michael M: I still have a set of Bose 901 speakers on pedestals that I bought in Germany in 1982. They still sound great. And my set of Craftsman socket set that my Dad bought me in the mid-60’s.

Don: Carver TFM 22 amp and CT7 preamp with a Marantz 6300 turntable and ADS L730 speakers. All original and still sound amazing. 1965 Ludwig drum kit. Lots of S-gauge trains and a Yamaha XS1100 from ’81. The wife doesn’t get any of it, but what are you going to do?

ANDY M: Late ’70s Pioneer silver-face home stereo (SA-7500-2, SG-9500, and PL-514) from my youth with Realistic T-300 speakers.

SJMorgan: JBL Hartsfields, McIntosh 2105, and C26. All ’60s stuff. Too bad my hearing is just about gone.

02 original owner: Much to my wife’s chagrin, I have my folks’ 1959 Stromberg-Carlson console stereo, complete with a four-speed Garrard record changer housed in a Danish Modern cabinet. Also have my aunt and uncle’s 1941 Philco am/shortwave console radio, and a 1947 FM converter to go with it. My oldest mechanical thing is an 1845 Chauncey Jerome 30-hour mantle clock, bought incomplete and not running. It does now, quite accurately, and keeps time with a similar Ansonia clock from 1869. Love my striking clocks.

Binksman: My 16-year-old and his friends are into CB radios for their vehicles, so we’ve been sourcing and helping them install them. The vehicle-mounted units all work pretty well, though finding coaxial hardware is harder than it used to be. The truck stops around us have supplied the rest. I did pick up some handheld units that date back to the late ’70s, which are now powered AND made rechargeable by replacing the corroded battery tray with some of his older RC car batteries.

Flatman: In 1972, I spent 10% of my yearly salary on a Kenwood receiver and Thorens turntable. Had them refurbished recently at an incredible shop in Greenville, SC that has been around for over 50 years.

RobH: Sajeev, one of the most entertaining (non-car-related) threads I’ve read in a long time! Well done. Like many, I’m listening to ’70’s-era vinyl records through a 70’s-vintage dual turntable, PSB Avante speakers (Canadian studio-grade, made in Toronto), and have many of my Dad’s tools from the 60’s. Great stories, everyone!!

Computers And Tech

HRC: I rely on my Windows 10 PC every day, including running ProTools 12 for audio production (Cars and Guitars and my passions). And, I will continue to run Win10 + ProTools 12 as long as the ProTools product managers allow it. As for cars, aside from my 1958 Chevy Delray, my daily driver is a 2005 Infiniti G35–no screens anywhere.

Lest anyone think I’m a Luddite, I spent my career in tech HW and SW, including my most recent stint in an AI-driven cloud SW company. I just don’t believe we need any of the “advanced” stuff for a good life in nearly all our day-to-day living. By the way, I love my vintage 1970s Starret micrometers.

Mark P: Well, this is my specialty. Lots of vintage model trains, including a nice selection from the 1950s–though no small amount thereof are from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s too–and not just locomotives and railcars, but also track, transformers, and accessories. But I’ve got radios and clocks from the ’70s, a Dell Dimension 4550 computer running Windows XP, mostly for playing Mahjong (I mean, technically speaking, early 2000s is still vintage… doesn’t feel like it though).

Then I have three typewriters (that I use!), and other assorted, well, um, junk. Oh, yes, and a brave little toaster from the late ’40s, a Philips CRT TV, a handful of VCRs that work on occasion, and that sort of thing… and some old lamps, too, and a handful of older phones. Oh, and a time clock I dug out of the garbage at work that’s at least a good 25 years old. Stuff like that.

Thomas M: Don’t connect your XP machine to the internet, or it will be infected in minutes. MSBlaster, Sasser, and Wannacry, among others, are still out there trying to find legacy machines. Once infected they can infect the rest of the network.

Adam B: I have a collection of all the Newton MessagePad variants (100, 110, 120, 2100, and eMate), as well as a collection of unusual cellphones (including the Nokia 7280 “lipstick phone”).

Appliances

jeepcj5: The fridge we have in the kitchen is from when my parents got married in the mid-1970s. It’s been trouble-free, which cannot be said of the multiple, much newer fridges that we have cycled through in the garage. There’s also a mid-1940s Philco fridge in the garage being used for storage of vehicle-related fluids.

Hammerin’ Hank: I think it’s funny that everyone seems to have a refrigerator from the ’40s or ’50s (I have one from the ’70s in my garage that works great), but any fridge built after the ’90s dies before 10 years.

Rick B: 1960’s Kelvinator stove, the clock even keeps perfect time, I still have a large number of car magazines from the ’50s through the ’90s, record albums from the ’60s through the ’80s, Ariens snow blower from the ’70s (starts first pull).

Cornbinder: The most applicable here: the garage ‘fridge is a 1954 International Harvester (what else would you expect with a user name “Cornbinder?”). It’s outlasted two modern ones in the house. I fully expect it to be running long after I’m dead, because, unlike me, they were built with a 100-year life cycle engineered into them.

Toys And Collectibles

Al Kasishke: I have a large collection of antique automotive toys from the 1920s through the 1950s. Also collect some porcelain signs and antique tractors.

Sal E: As far as collectible stuff, I have a slew of ’60s-’80s comic books and quite a few ’80s diecast cars. As far as functional items, I’m still rocking my Pioneer home receiver I bought in 1997.

Headturner: Stick-shift Stingray bikes and slot cars. LOTS of slot cars!

Alex: I collect vintage singing cowboy items, mostly Roy Rogers & Gene Autry, but also some others. I’ve got about 115 of their films and assorted branded and endorsed items like guitars, cameras, milk bottles, cereal boxes, toy guns, figures and horses, books, signed photos, magazine covers, records, etc.

Jeepcj5: At work I have a lot of vintage Swingline staplers, including some Speed Products (company name before Swingline). At home there is a shelf full of Matchbox Lesney cars and trucks. And I like to collect pre-war S&W revolvers and also various surplus rifles from the WWII era and older. Yikes, I’m sounding like a hoarder.

DUB6: If the office staplers are red, you get 10 extra bonus points!

norm1200: If Bostitch brand, minus 10 points!

Rick B: I have a 1953 Porky Pig piggy bank, lots of old, working Zippos several ’70s-’80s cameras. All in working condition.

Brian J: Don’t know if this qualifies as vintage or not, and it is semi-automotive related, but about 30 years ago, I got into Scalextric (1/32 scale) slot cars. Ended up building a four-lane track, lap size about 60 feet, on a 20×8 table. Have several cars that are at least 20 years old, and still run. And much like a lot of our car-based accounting, I never add up the cost of what I have spent on the hobby!

dave: I am surprised that the obvious isn’t mentioned here: baseball cards from the 1960s.

Vintage Homes

Mark R: A 1917 English cottage style home in Detroit, with a 1917 Brunswick billiard table in the original basement rec room, among other old things. Oh yeah, a couple of cars…

rogerd: My house is from 1910. The phone (working) in my front hall is a 1950’s rotary dial, bakelite unit and my motorcycle is a 1979 CB750L. I have other old stuff, but those—and the two cars—are the big ones.

C.J.: We live in a 1890s Victorian home that we restored over the past forty years, I’ve been drumming since ninety sixty four, I play a vintage set of Fibes drums made in Texas, our sound system is a forty-year-old Nakamichi receiver with Vandersteen tower speakers, my wife cooks on an 1915 Acme stove we restored, my tools are vintage Snap On and Craftsman that I purchased new back in the late sixties when I started my career as a mechanic, we have acquired through swap meets lots of vintage toys on display in our home. Old stuff is the best.

ZD: My home was built in 1962 and is typical Mid-Century Modern in design. I collect MCM furniture, vintage airline bags, vintage cameras (Polaroid and film), and vintage pencil sharpeners.

Small Electronics, Household goods, Furniture, etc.

Robie: I have a couple of Motorola radios from the 1940s: My wife has pleaded with me for years to give them away!

PRA4SNW: My latest “vintage” fixation—there have been many—is buying old Timex watches from thrift stores and fixing them so they look good and mostly operate nicely. A cheap enough hobby.

kevin k: I have a 1963 three-burner Coleman camp stove to go with my ’63 vette. The vette does not go camping, however.

Alan S: Oh goodness. A dozen old Bultaco motorcycles, early Yamaha, Grundig AM/FM/SW, a bunch of old cameras, a few watches, colonial and early-American furniture, books and posters, tools, and, of course, myself in my ninth decade.

B.Kowalick: I’ve got a mint-condition 1969 Schwinn Krate Stingray bike being used as wall art, a 1970s General Electric kitchen clock bought from eBay to replace a 1960s GE clock (seems plug-in wall clocks are a thing of the past) that finally gave up the ghost, and a late ’60s Husky ratchet and socket set that was purchased from a defunct department store (Two Guys) from that era that is much higher quality than the new ones sold at Home Depot.

DUB6: I have way too many not-an-automobile vintage items to really want to expend the energy to type here, but perhaps my most prominent stuff is my collection of Coca-Cola items, from bottles to whimsy to bling to marketing materials. Some of my stuff dates back to the late 1800s, and I started collecting in the 1960s.

The most prized bottle is one I pried off the bottom while snorkeling in the lagoon of the Wake Island atoll, with a small piece of coral still attached to it. It had a tiny crab living in it (Wake is famous for hermit crabs) that I shook out. It’s not particularly old—dated in 1948—but since it was probably tossed into the lagoon by someone reestablishing U.S. possession of the island after WWII, and since that’s where my father was made a POW in 1941, it has a lot of meaning for me.

SJMorgan: Being a photographer, and coming from a family that owned camera stores, I have an original Nikon F, with my Dad’s name engraved on the back cover, a gift from the importer when the camera was introduced, another F Photomic, couple of latter F bodies, an F3, and what is likely the oldest Mamiaflex C3 Professional interchangeable twin lens reflex with the 135mm lens in the country. There is also a pair of fully functioning Pentax 645s with most of the available lenses. I have dusted those off and have started to shoot medium format film again.

And lots of other stuff that represents the excellence of that time. Some things transcend age and have yet to be improved upon. Excellence transcends time.

Unexpected Treasures!

Tinkerah: I finally have something to contribute to one of these: carbon arcs! (Spotlight)

Glenn: For starters, my house was built in 1901. I bought it in ’98 and spent a decade “restomodding” the house to look restored but with a few tasteful accommodations to modern life. I also have a small collection of old audio equipment, such as Zenith and Philco tube radios. The oldest item I have in that collection is a 1920s Edison Diamond Disc player. It’s an amazing experience to listen to recordings made a century ago on the original media.

I also have several pieces of Coke and Pepsi signage from the 50s, including a 1955 Coke vending machine that dispenses 10-oz bottles. Then there’s the antique furniture in most of the rooms, the 1950’s era Lionel O gauge model train layout, and the Civil War firearms and swords. And by now, you’re probably picturing something like the Addams Family house.

James: A pair of Edo-period swords. Some large micrometers made by my great-grandfather. A black powder fowling piece from the 1820s. Various birds-eye lithographs of Bay Area sites from the 19th century. 1930s-40s lathe and mill. A ’75 Norton Commando 850. Glass front lawyers’ shelves, made of high-grade quartersawn oak. A hadrosaur footprint from a mine in Utah. The bronze alarm bell from a defunct bank on the Nebraska prairie.

John S: My wife rescued a 1886 Halls Safe from her work. It was made in Cincinnati, Ohio, just down the road on Spring Grove Ave. (bonus: a piece of our city’s history). The place was demolishing one of the older buildings due to rising maintenance costs. So they sold off what they could, and the rest would be left to the wrecking crew for scrap. So a week before the scheduled demo, we rounded up a crew and a flatbed tow truck, carefully extracted it from the basement and saved it.

It’s like 7 feet tall, made from two-inch thick hardened steel, reinforced with concrete, weighing in at over 6000 lbs!! Two main doors with a dial combo. Then a secondary set of doors opens up into a cherry wood shelving system with cubbies, key-lockable drawers, and another small jewelry combo safe within. The best part about it is it still retains the original dark green paint, gold leafing, and pin striping designs on the inner set of doors. Along with a plaque of the company’s name, where it was made and the date of manufacturing. One of our best (non-car) finds to date!

Rich S: A 1959 15-foot StarCraft aluminum boat. I offered a lady $75 to pull it out of her garden with a giant sunflower growing out of it. That was in 1979. Converted the old runabout to a center console with new interior, teak work, bright work, and paint. My 1983 30-hp Mariner runs like a top. Use it in rivers, bays, and even out in the ocean for wreck fishing. From a distance, people think it’s a Boston Whaler.

DUB6: I have a United States Air Pump Co. compressor (Service Station style) that’s dated 1936. It came out of an old station/mechanic’s shop that our daughter had bought way out of town on a country highway, and says it operates at 175 lbs. I’m currently working on restoring it to working order (hopefully) and hooking it up to my shop air lines, since my older ‘garage model’ quit this spring!