um, I own a nice prewar drag plate reel. I don't fish it. But I do like the first version of the patent drag reel, its looks, feel and sounds.
I do fish five prewar click-pawl Pfluegers and three of those are Medalists.
For almost exactly 50 years, the Medalist was the premiere American-made reel, not counting bench-made reels.
It was the top-line production reel. There were some excellent production reels made including the Heddons, earliest Shakespeare Russell in various badges, the Shakespeare perfect, but they never caught on because everybody
liked the Pflueger drag.
These were also squeezed out by the imported Brit reels, which they tried to imitate
(The Medalist imitated nothing - it stood alone.)
The Americans made scads of stamped-from-sheet reels and most of them were junk. The Medalist stood out as the quality American-made reel and the home-grown drag made it even more unique. Note also the Medalist was not a cheap reel until production went offshore (and snazzy American flyfishers decided the design had become long in the tooth). Another beauty of the design was its simplicity and longevity, not requiring the attention or hand-tuning of the Brit reels. Slap them together and they go. It defined the American fly reel, even beyond its prime.
Ross and Lamson, coming around in the 80s, started as bench-made reels, and both finally moved offshore. Note that Ross, Abel, Valentine all use their form of the original Medalist ratchet design - the simplest possible clutch on a drag fly reel. At least one offshore Ross I remember compares more with the American stamped from sheet junk than it does with the Medalist.
The Medalist also lost some quality when it went offshore. It was cheaper to make frames and finally feet from diecastings, inferior material to the aircraft-grade aluminum sheet used for 40 of those 50 years. The Medalist is offically dead, gentlemen, after 80 years. They are no longer being manufactured anywhere, and I believe Shakespeare is putting the brakes on the parts and support.