Top selling reel of all time

[Robert Janssen]

Well, really little light has been shed on how many reels could have been sold by Pfleuger and others thus far. I've been fairly convinced all along that the Ambassadeurs 20+ million must be a milestone unsurpassed. I didn't bother to ask anyone at Abu about it, but coincidentally i did run into longtime Penn associate Steve Carsons yesterday. He was very hesitant to name any quotable numbers, but did mention that their 209 and Jigmaster have always been very high on the list. But, nowhere even near the vicinity of the small round baitcasters, with reference to the simplified demographic influence outlined earlier.

He also did mention that the Penn 320 was their bestseller for a time. (so, thats where that came from: it was Penn's best selling reel at that time, but not the best selling reel of all time. )

It would be interesting to hear how many Calcuttas are out there though, just for comparison. Or for that matter, if any Pfluegers come close.


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[Reinaard van der Vossen]

I have no figures but I think it must be ABU. Even today they are immense popular in Europe for freshwater fishing and they are the the reel to go when tossing jerkbaits for pike etc. It seems almost every fisherman has at least one or several. If you look at the fisherman fora starters who want a round baitcaster reels are almost always advised to get an ABU C3 or jerkbait as they give the best run for the mony. Sure there are others but they comparibly seem to live in the margin in this segment which is the largest segment in Europe freshwater. They also are quite popular with their low profile baitcasters but have some more competition there.

Now saltwater might be a different thing. ABU was never really big for large saltwater reels. For long there largest reel(except some exotics) were the 10000 big game reels which are nowhere near big game in my opinion. Their 7000 model was popular for inshore saltwater though.

They were also already popular many decades ago. My oldest ABU 6000 must be over 35 years old (from my dad) and my newest  (record 6501) ist a year old.

If there are nof figures available and I would have to make an educated gues than it would be ABU. I don't know how popular they have been in Asia though

[Dick Braun]

Zebco had very good production numbers and from 1949-1999 their 1st 50yrs. across their entire line of reels, all models and types they produced some 220,000,000 million reels, the 33 in the 1st 33 yrs of production the total was 22,000,000 million.  In 1962 when the 202 was introduced it became so popular that in the early 70's they were making 30,000 a day, 150,000 a week and if you take that out 50 weeks the total for just one year was 7,500,000 million.  The 202 is still being made today.

[erikpowell]

Hi Dick & welcome to the forum!

That's awesome you chimed in here with some numbers. Did you work for Zebco at some point?
I wish we could find some figures like these to apply to Abu and Penn so we could whittle this one down some more.

Thanks for stopping in!

[floating doc]

one big difference in the small Zebco reels vs. the Penn conventional reels is the fact that the cheaper reels could be considered disposable.  It makes sense to fix a Squidder, Senator, etc. and the parts are available.

If your Zebco breaks throw it away and buy another one. Lots more get sold for that reason.

[Dick Braun]

Hi Erik
No just most likely have the largest Zebco Collection in the country 13yrs of collecting the reels and knowledge about the company, known on ebay as that-zebco-guy, I belong to ORCA, FATC, NFLCC which are Old Reel Collector's Assoc., Floricda Antique Tackle Collectors, National Fishing Lure Collectors Club.  I've written numerous articles for the different club magazine's. and you can find me on google : dick braun zebco, will bring up most of the articles that have been published.  I joined your fine web site as your thread moved over to ORCA site under reel talk and there are 94 post.  they did change the title a little to read: Top selling Conventional reel of all time.  A little fight back, some of the cheaper are throw away reels but some of the other's are as bullet proof as many reels costing much more.  A fun site to go to as far as value is:  open a google window and just type the words, Inflation Calculator, up will come the U.S. Dept of Labor Inflation Calculator and you put in what your reel cost orig. and the year and the site will tell you what it would be in 2013 dollars.  it will most likely shock you to find out the today's dollars.  Back to: Top Selling Reel of all Time.  Cost should not enter into the equation your talking about numbers not quality.  I may be able to get you some ABU numbers and some Penn number's I'll see what I can do.
Regards
Dick

[floating doc]

Dick, what great luck to have you join us here! I look forward to more of your comments.

Welcome!

[Robert Janssen]

Thanks for the reminder; i haven't updated this thread recently.

Yes, Dick has been very informative on the subject. Just as a matter of interest, that number is seriously worthy of thought- consider it a minute: 220 million is an enormous number. It is for example far more than all the AK-47s* and M16s ever made, more than all the Volkswagen Beetles and Ford Model T too. All of them together, in fact. It is approximately equal to the entire population of the USA in 1980, and comparable to the total number of registered motor vehicles in the entire country today. It is also twenty times the number of hits you get if you Google search Fishing Reel, and would have meant making a reel every three seconds. :-)

In the meantime, i got ahold of an acquaintance who was the CEO of Penn, and is very interested in reel history. He said that accurate records are hard to find, but he did know that for a time, the Penn 209 was a huge seller. During one period, they were making about half as many of those as Zebco was 202s- like, 4000 a day!

I did drop a line to an acquaintance at Abu, but they are very busy this time of year, and have far more important things to do for the future than ponder the reels of yesteryear, so i really don't expect an answer anytime soon.

I did find a few other sources that upped the number a bit, to north of twenty-five, even twenty-eight million Ambassadeurs. It is very hard to see any other reel that can claim such numbers. Now it remains to find out which model exactly, but it is easily speculated that something in the middle would be the one- 5000, 6000...

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*A lot of you guys are gun fans... sorry to say, Mr Kalashnikov died yesterday.

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[Pro Reel]

A lot of you mentioned salt reels since thats what you are used to. I think that a reel that was popular in both salt and freshwater would have the highest chance of being the top all time seller. My guess would be an abu 5000, if you counted all versions of the 5000. my 2nd guess would be a zebco 33.