Vintage Martin #23 Automatic Fishing Reel: '42-53; cleaned, lubed, graphic, box

Description

Offered for auction: A vintage Martin #23 automatic fishing reel with applied trout graphic and presentation box. The reel has 1939 and 1942 patent dates, so it was manufactured 1942-1953.
Although not rare, these reels are uncommon on eBay.
This reel has been disassembled, cleaned, given a two-tone paint job and it has an applied trout graphic secured with several coats of clear-coat lacquer. The reel is in excellent operating condition and works as smoothly as silk. It has been lightly lubricated with waterproof bicycle bearing grease (see last picture), reassembled and adjusted. Included is a presentation box made from a cigar box (see the two, next-to-last pictures).
This is a one-of-a-kind reel that should serve you well for many years - buy it with confidence.
If you are a reel collector, it will certainly liven up your reel shelves!
There is a rewind-spring-release knob on the spring disk that free-spools the line, so, if you like to play a fish with a pile of line accumulating at your feet or streaming downstream from you in the river, you may. Of course, automatic reels were developed by Martin and other companies in the late 1800s to avoid just this problem. If one plays the fish while holding the spool-rewind lever up with the little finger, any slack line is immediately taken back onto the spool.
Martin offered this reel model as one of its first upright (= vertically mounted spool) reels, along with the smaller-spool #22 and larger-spool #24 reels, which correspond to the old Martin # 2, #3, and #4 reel models. The reel has the newly-designed pawl spool brake, instead of the leather pads used on all previous models. It and model #6 are the last of the Martin reels with pillars to secure the upper spring disk to the lower part of the reel; they were replaced with the modern "tuna can" models. The reel is intended for trout, bass and general freshwater fishing. If you fish with vintage fly line and, perhaps, a bamboo rod, the reel's spool will hold about 90' of “G” line. If you use modern fly line, the spool will hold about 70' of commonly available floating line. It weighs 8.6 ounces, about half an ounce heavier a more modern Martin Fly-Wate "tuna can" auto reel (#37/38 and #47/48).
Martin reels are way over-built and, if you clean and lubricate it once in a while, this reel will probably last another 75 years. The newly designed pawl spool brake holds well, even when the rewind spring has been wound up tightly. Martin rewind springs cannot be over-wound by a big fish on a long run because all Martin reels have an automatic spring-tension release mechanism built into the line spool. As with any automatic reel, one CAN break the reel's rewind spring by over-winding it by hand or by letting the spool rewind way too fast as the end of the line returns to the reel or by rewinding way too fast with an empty spool.
From time to time I will offer other Martin reels with similar applied trout graphics, so please keep an eye on my listings at:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/holl-1832/m.html     This reel would make an excellent Christmas gift.