The Zebco Cardinal's are extremely collectable and useable, these Swedish made jewels had the smoothest drags of any spinning reel that you could buy back then.
I think that the #3 fetches the highest prices and a fair condition example goes for around 100 bucks or so on ebay.
The Reel that really kicked off Spin fishing was the Mitchell which came in to the US from France in the late 1940's. The first shipment of these were fitted with a Rose Wood handles and was quickly recalled because of the nature of wood not being equal and some of the handles were splitting.
So they recalled them right away and refitted them with a turned aluminum handle.
As a result of this recall the wood handled Mitchell's are extremely rare.
I have pictures of the one my Dad purchased at Bill Lohrer's sports shop in 1949. Buzz Fiorini was working there and my dad had known him from his Boeing days. I guess these reel had just hit town and Buzz told my dad that these new reels would out cast any thing out there and he made a quick sale. I guess it was a good purchase because my dad used that reel for years.
In 2003 I showed this reel to a fellow named Ben Wright who had written a book on the value of collectable spinning reels and he said that I had better hang on to it because he only knew of 5 others of these to exist at that time.

If you have one of these, I would be very happy to take it off your hands for you.


Pacific Northwest Fishing Golden Years