Abu Garcia Ambassadeur 5000 casting pre 1963 vintage fishing reel 88686

Description: ABU GARCIA HISTORY ABU began in the early 1920s as precision timepiece and instrumentation engineers. The next ten years saw a shift to fishing reel manufacture. Their high standards and engineering excellence in timepieces was evident in their reels. When one spins an ABU the oft used cliché ?Swiss watch? immediately springs to mind. In the mid-60s, ABU brought out a reel that still to this day is seen as a benchmark in quality and reliability ? the Cardinal fixed spool. It immediately made the venerable Mitchell 300 look positively medieval and crude. The 300, once the go-to reel for all anglers from match anglers to specimen hunters, was now replaced by the Cardinal. The early-70s saw the introduction of the Cardinal 3, 4, 6 and 7. In the mid-70s ABU launched a mid-priced Cardinal range ? the Cardinal 40, 60 and 70. These reels, although substantially cheaper than their ancestors, are still an excellent reel and one I would highly recommend if one wanted a reasonably priced old Cardinal model. At the end of the 70s ABU released another set of benchmark reels that turned the specimen world on its head, the Cardinal 50 series. These included the sublime Cardinal 55, the choice of nearly all the pioneering carp anglers; Maddocks, Paisley, MacDonald, to name but a few, all swore by their Cardinal 55s.However, the Cardinal 55?s reign was short lived as Shimano introduced its ?Seaspin? baitrunners in the early 80s. Although not a patch on the Cardinal quality-wise it was the convenience of the freespool facility that made the Shimano an overnight sensation. Indeed, Kevin Maddocks used his 55s years after the introduction of the baitrunner but admitted that the freespool facility was too good an advantage to ignore for his carp fishing. In the mid 80s ABU opened a manufacturing plant in Japan and although some of the reels were good they were going nowhere and running out of ideas and really the only edge they had on the competition was their range of excellent closed-face reels, designed for river float fishing (trotting). These alone were not enough to save them.The last decent Cardinals were the ?C? range, which I mentioned earlier. Solidly built but looking increasingly long in the tooth when compared to its Japanese competitors, just like what ABU did to Mitchell earlier. ABU died off as an entity slowly and quietly in the late 90s and released as its swansong, the Suveran, an astonishingly made reel built in the true Svängsta tradition and highly prized to this day. Prices for Cardinals have risen dramatically in the last ten or so years. Boxed, mint examples regularly go for a few hundred euro with the ?X? and ?Express? high-speed models commanding a premium. Today ABU is a brand name under the Pure Fishing giant that specialise in lower-end fishing tackle. They were once obsessed with quality and boasting an engineering heritage that?s second to none. We will never see their like again.About the Ambassadeur 6000. The bulk of the 6000s were produced during the 60s. If it has 4 screws on the left plate it will be a 60s reel as ABU went over to a 3 screw design in the early/mid sixties. About the Ambassadeur 5000. When the Ambassadeur bait caster came to America in 1954, it was Julian A. Wesseler that secured the contract with ABU to sell their reel. The reel was actually offered to the Garcia Corp. first, but Tom Lenk (Garcia?s company head) showed little interest. It wasn?t long before Tom saw the reel?s potential, and a deal was struck between Garcia and ABU in 1956. Garcia cataloged the Ambassadeur for the first time in 1957. Year Identification by Lot Number There are three types of lot number arrangements used to identify the month and year a reel was mfg 'd. They were used from mid 1964 into the 1980s. Identical lot numbers can be found on many reels within a given model. If you’re not sure the frame is stamped with a serial number or lot number, try breaking down your reel’s 6 digit number into 3 groups of 2 numbers each. As an example, lets use a known lot number of 73 09 02 or a random serial number of 71 13 09. Using the 3 types of date codes below, see if you can make the first two group of numbers represent a year AND a month. If you can not, it’s definitely a serial number. As far as I’m aware of, revision number “07” is the largest number carried throughout the 1970’s for an Ambassadeur reel and was issued to model 6000. Earliest Lot Number The earliest use of a lot number started in 1964, and is read quite differently than the second and third type codes. The 1750, 1750A, Abu 3000, Amb. 4000, 6000(C) 8000 and 9000 can be found with the earliest date code arrangement. There will be 6 digits on the reel foot. An example might be 080400. Reading the numbers from left to right......The first two numbers of "08" are for the month of (August).....The third digit will always be a "0" indicating the number "6" for the 1960s decade. The fourth digit in this example "4" is the actual year of that decade, 1964. The last two numbers "00" would reflect the number of revisions made to the reel which are none in this example. Another example might be 120501. (12) December (05) 1965 (01) revisions. How you read a lot number changed in 1970 with the second and third type date code. Now, the actual year "70" was used. Second type: MMYYXX....month, actual year, revision. 1970~mid to late 72. Third type: YYMMXX....year, month, revision. Late 1972 into the 1980s. (most common type).

Price: 199.99 USD

Location: Athens, Texas

End Time: 2024-09-24T02:20:09.000Z

Shipping Cost: N/A USD