Just found this one...came from a basement...a junk guy threw it up on CL...amazing how lightweight these are...nothing wrong with it...very little varnish build up...I just cleaned with Boeshield...has a nice single pawl purr with a little more resistance on the pay than the wind...I'd love to line it up and use it, but am very partial to LHW and don't have the skills or desire to convert it to RHW...

The second reel is a 1392 from same era (single pawl, no spare spring)...already had this one...these two reels are absolutely identical twins other than the ringer...Clearly, it was very simple for Plueger to upgrade the 1392 to the 1492...add a ringer and stamp it with a four...pretty cool that you can find these reels 90 years later, wipe them off and use them...a testament to US pre-war quality of engineering and manufacturing...

Sandman

congrats, you have a desirable reel there, truthfully worth $300+.
I don't think you can split hairs on dating Medalists before 1935 - dated boxed examples ($1500) with exceptions to the attempted rules turn up. Production changes were too often whims based on depth of the parts bins.
What you notice about these reels is the finish has a soapy quality, and tolerances are tighter than later production.

Thanks all...

BD, great description of the feel...I can imagine if you put a dry bar of soap in your hands for a few minutes to get it up to body temp, it would feel exactly like these leaded (or whatever process of leading and painting it is) reels feel...a smoothness unlike any other finish...and yes, there is no spool wobble and very tight spool to housing tolerance...probably, dare I say, approaching the pre-war British (Hardy and such) reels.

Sandman

Very cool!

Thanks John, very nice set, but it must be painstakingly difficult deciding which one of those to take fishing...

Sandman

You guys are killing me with all these old Medalists, always wanted one but just can't go back to right handed reeling.

Nice reels. I recently picked up a single spring pillar arbor 1392. The one I got isn’t nearly as nice as yours. I need to find one of the spring screws.

better with fish

I have never seen a 1392 without a pawl stop, or with alloy foot in place of brass - you may have a really old example there, after all

Thanks PinkSquirrel. From this info, indications are that pawl stops came about during the dual pawl era. Below is a closer view of my one pawl reels with no stops. While the 1400 (ringer) series would not be so clean to convert to LHW due to the ring, the 1300 series of one-pawl reels is quite simple with just two bends of the spring (one at the knee and one at the pawl). BD describes this much better in a sticky post. I've never been inclined to pound out or grind the stop on these pre-war Pfluegers to convert to LHW (I think I keep mistakenly referring to LHW as RHW in previous posts).

It looks like we are touching on attribute timelines of the prewar Medalist (pawls, spindles, spools, springs, stops, rivets, screws, foot, etc). While it may be splitting hairs or may be very difficult to know definitively, it may be a fun topic to explore the timeline and associated progression of characteristics, even though we know Pflueger were masters at utilizing left over parts and materials, creating many exceptions to the rule. Would need reels in date stamped boxes to do this. It may be the members of this forum, collectively, have enough of these to turn speculation into general consensus, or at least have fun trying. Somebody with pre-war dated box(es) would likely be best to start this type of topic.

Sandman