I’m selling a part of my 40+ year tackle collection over the coming months. Over 10,000 reels and 15,000 lures and need to thin the herd. Bookmark me because I’ll be listing 30-50 reels every week, so check out my other auctions! So much rare stuff. I am listing reels Monday-Thursday so if you see reels you like that end later in the week, I’ll wait to send an invoice until the Thursday reels have ended to save you shipping costs. First month put nearly 200 reels into new homes! Thanks to everyone. I truly appreciate it.
DESCRIPTION:
This is a VERY tough Shakespeare made trade fly reel. It is marked “Sportsman” and is a model No. 405 “Metal Fly Reel” in the original Sportsman box. Sportsman was a trade name used on sporting goods by a wholesale hardware co-op based in Philadelphia in the immediately post-war era. It’s a South Bend Model 1120 fly reel, which of course was manufactured by the Wm. Shakespeare Co. of Kalamazoo, Mich. See below for a brief history of Shakespeare reels. This is a really tough combo fly reel to find in the box, and a super tough South Bend/Shakespeare trade reel. A great addition to your collection or to fish with!
SHIPPING:
Domestic shipping will be $8 via USPS first class mail in the domestic USA. Combined domesticI lots will be shipped via USPS Priority Mail. International shipping only through eBay’s international shipping program.
NOTES:
I’ve collected reels and lures for 40 years and I love them and their history, and really just want these to have happy homes. If there’s any issues I’ll fix them for you.
Inventory Code: D057
BRIEF HISTORY:
What can I say about the William Shakespeare, Jr. Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan? The fact that there are so many Shakespeare reels on the market is a testament to their ingenuity and success; the fact that the company is still around today signifies that it was a company that always understood how to change with the times.
Founded in 1897 by the namesake, who bench made innovative reels by hand, Shakespeare soon went into reel making big time around 1900, and when they brought on board the singular genius of Walter Marhoff, inventor of an incredibly successful level wind mechanism, the firm exploded. No one made a better product for a better price than Shakespeare. My father, who started fishing in 1929 and didn’t stop until 2023, owned a reel at one time or another from every reel maker from across the globe. My whole life he told me he preferred a Shakespeare Marhoff over everything else.
When I say the company made every kind of reel I mean it; from skeleton fly reels to the complex Miller Autocrat saltwater big game reels to tournament casting reels to innovative spin cast and spinning reels to any kind of bait casting reel you could imagine. In most catalog years they offered 100 or more different varieties of reels, all built — as the advertising said — like a fine watch.
To collect Shakespeare reels is to commit to a lifelong marriage with a company that will always surprise you and will never let you down. The company had the foresight to code date most of their reels post-1910 which aids greatly in collecting and identifying. A Shakespeare collector can focus on a single model and spend a decade or more building a representative collection, or they can just collect what appeals to them — and when it comes to Shakespeare it’ll shock you what comes up and makes you think, I love that. My dear friends out East spent 30 years trying to complete a collection of dated 1910 Shakespeare reels and got to 350 different — a third of the way home.
Shakespeare even sold some trade reels, marked for various wholesalers, sporting goods, and department stores, but they are rare. In 1936 the firm founded the Kalamazoo Tackle Company as a kind of subsidiary to make branded trade reels under that name. They also manufactured nearly all of the reels for the South Bend Bait Company. Phew.
As I said collecting Shakespeare is a labor of love. But like all labors of live, it gives a remarkable reward. You can find Shakespeare reels in the collector market for anywhere from $5 to $1000 or more. Something for everyone!
Anyone interested in collecting Shakespeare should consider joining the Old Reel Collector’s Association; their bi-monthly publication The Reel News is the heart of reel collecting and their digital library of 20,000+ pages of fishing tackle catalogs is free to all members. I believe they have a full set of Shakespeare catalogs, and dozens of research articles on Shakespeare reels of all kinds.