A very rare little Penn reel!

[Penn Chronology]

Every now and then, a super rare item comes along. I am always looking for these items and hardly ever finding one; but, this reel was different. I saw a photo of it years ago and thought I recognized it as a oddly small Long Beach. The reel would hardly raise an eyebrow among Penn collectors until you look at from all angles. Looking at the side plate immediately tells us what we have as far as a base model is concerned.



              Just a plain old Penn Beachmaster Model 160. Must be thousands of them out there. Small in diameter, two and one eighth inch wide spool. Sure, us Penn guys have seen these a million times; but, wait!! What is going on here? Let's try looking at this reel a bit differently. Start to turn this little reel around and things start to get weird.



Seems like there is not enough reel to be a Model 160?



Looking at the reel from the tail plate does not help. It has part number for a Long Beach spool bearing. A stippled tail plate for a Penn 160; but, it still looks weird!!



Now we need another angle. Looking at this reel straight on the forward end just blows away all the norms a Penn collector would expect to find in any Penn reel. Here is a Penn reel with all the standard gears, drags and anti-reverse mechanicals. It has a standard head and tail plate, chrome plated spool, rings and stand; but, it is as narrow as a fly reel.



Looking at the bottom of the reel raises many more questions. The stand seems to be bent tighter than any other Penn reel in the entire history of Penn Production.



Checking the stand Part Number opens another can of oddball worms. This is one of the most common of all Penn stands. It fits many different Penn reels; but, the one we see here will only fit this odd Penn Beachmaster.

                What is interesting here is there is a unconfirmed story that came along with this oddity. I was thinking this was a one-off Penn reel; but, I was told there are two other of these. A set of three reels were made in the Penn plant to be used to troll teasers on the Penn Company Sport fishing boat used as a test platform. That means there are two more of these out there!

[steelhead_killer]

Very cool!  Thank you for sharing!

[Shark Hunter]

Amazing Mike!

[David Hall]

Interesting little reel, I pray I never run across one!  It would probably eat my retirement.

[foakes]

That is a very special and neat reel, Michael --

Was looking for some parts today, ran across a few reels in the bottom of an old box from a closed tackle shop estate.  Might have picked this up 20 years ago, never had a chance to go through it yet.

No big deals here, but thought they were kind of neat.

Your neat Penn find is much more valuable, interesting, and rare -- but these are just solid old reels.

Little OC from Philadelphia -- 987 -- green spool and handle -- 1 3/8" posts.

Old 113D True Temper -- of course made by OC.

Old JA Coxe #630 300yd made in Bronson, Michigan.

Someday, might get a chance to go through these reels.  Have found around 100 old Ocean Citys so far.

Probably someone else will get to go through these, at some point.

Not meaning to hijack your cool thread -- just saw that little narrow OC 987.

Best,

Fred

[Penn Chronology]

Happy to share.

Yes Fred, I am sure your OC reels would take much of your time. Ocean City was a complicated company. As I was going through the Ocean City history I started using a two word expression very often to describe the many sides of Ocean City. I referred to many of the company history results as the "Confusion Aspect". I even feel that the over complicated nature of how Ocean City named their products and tried to keep a organized parts supply available to the market may have played a part in their eventual end. The actual time span of the existence of the Ocean City Mfg. company was only 34 years, from 1923 to 1957. Their products were around before and after the OC Company existed under other company names.

Thanks for the responses!

[Tightlines667]

That one really threw me for a loop Mike.  I mean the stand is clearly stamped.  That is pretty much the defination if a rare reel (only 3 ever known to have been produced). 

Thanks for sharing.

[mo65]

Very interesting...thanks for sharing!

[Bryan Young]

That is one neat little reel Mike. 

[Bill B]

Darn, now that Mike spilled the beans, my chances of paying $5 at a garage sale fro one are close to nil...   Mike you always amaze us with these little tid bits from Penn Reels...thanks brother.....Bill

[coastal_dan]

Neat!  Reminds me of a 'Ted Creation', haha.

[Maxed Out]

Dan, only Penn can create such a reel, and only Mike can find such a reel.

Mike, just add a rod clamp and it'll be complete   . You did not mention anything about the frame posts. They appear to be larger diameter than stock long beach or 160 posts. Whatever the case may be, I love it.

P.S. Mike, I'm still up for adoption.

 Ted

[sdlehr]

Maybe I'm missing something. It looks like they took a 200 stand and narrowed it... Why did they start with a 200? Surely other, more narrow stands could have worked as well, with less work as they would have started out narrower.... and I agree with Ted, those posts look thicker than stock.

Mike, what can you tell us about where this came from? I don't need names or addresses, just general info to satisfy my curiosity.

Sid

[George4741]

Mike, thanks for showing us another of your treasures.  It reminds me of another of your super narrow reels, the 60 yard Long Beach.  I'm hopelessly narrow minded so, the narrower the better.

Speaking of oddly marked Penn parts, I have a plastic spool clearly marked "29-155" but it is much narrower, identical to the 29-100 spool.

[Penn Chronology]

OK, since no paper exists on this reel, I have to go by the true physical dimensions and styles to determine a little bit of history. The info that the person gave me about the reel was as I stated. It was made in a set of three reels to use to troll teasers. The person that passed the reel to me got that info as hearsay also; but we are talking about hearsay from Penn people, from the days of when Penn was still an American company. So I feel the hearsay is good info.

As far as the physical aspects of the reel, the side plates, trim rings, handle, star wheel and internals are all off the shelf parts. The odd parts here are the cross bars, spool and stand.

You did not mention anything about the frame posts. They appear to be larger diameter than stock long beach or 160 posts. Whatever the case may be, I love it.

The diameter of the cross bars is 3/16 inch. That is a standard size cross bar for any Penn Beachmaster 155 or 160. What makes the bars look heavy is the fact that they are so narrow. The cross bars length measure just a bit over 15/16 inch.

Maybe I'm missing something. It looks like they took a 200 stand and narrowed it... Why did they start with a 200? Surely other, more narrow stands could have worked as well, with less work as they would have started out narrower.

The people at Penn probably used a 200 stand because they had a lot of metal to work with.
    The actual finished stand is done very nicely. All clean cuts and chrome plated. I guess starting with a 200 stand, there is a lot of metal to work with because of the mass of this particular stand that is built for use with a rod clamp.

The reel is really a tight little assembly. I do not think it would have worked for a regular production reel because it is actually tiny and back in the pre-braid days, you would not have gotten much mono on this reel.

Mike, thanks for showing us another of your treasures.  It reminds me of another of your super narrow reels, the 60 yard Long Beach.  I'm hopelessly narrow minded Roll Eyes so, the narrower the better

This is the 60 yard Long Beach. I was mistaken when I talked about that small Long Beach, because at that time I only had a single photo of the reel and I called it by the wrong model name. The 60 Long Beach is actually this tiny Beachmaster.