I don't see how it's possible to find one of these in the wild for $2. I've been hitting pawn stores, goodwills, craigs, fb market, etc for a month now and never found one IRL within 100 miles. Consider yourself lucky brother!
I actually found it for 5 but talked him to $2 bc I was a broke 15 year old and I spent the rest of my money on computer parts. Tbh there are many fans I seen at that flea market that I would love to have gotten for what they were asking I just did not have the dough.
A pedestal version of this would be very nice indeed. The set screw is on tight I'll just have to open it up again and figure out the noise issue. I think since its been opened before I got it and its been a few years since I worked on it and I have gotten better at working on these since there might be a spacer missing in the gearbox causing the gears to chatter.
I explained my reasoning in the video tho tbh if I find a fan that needs a set of guards those will probably go on it as I still like the older set for the look.
What is it you find interesting about collecting? To me it seems like such a random thing to be interested in but clearly there's something to it if you and others do it.
Having all the things in my possession cleaning them up and displaying them in my home makes me happy but what's interesting about collecting fans is I can rotate my collection to use them as my daily fans if I want to.
Solid job on that restoration. I am a collector of all things old and electric. I always put more stock in a piece like this that has been cleaned up and repaired as opposed to repainted and made new again. You did a great job of cleaning it up and making it safe and functional without reducing the piece's history. Mad respect for people who can do this right. I have an old Vornado and an Emmerson Silver Swan that fit that category of clean-but-original approach to restoration. Good choice for alcohol for getting the paint off, but beware -- in my early days, I screwed up and wiped a dial scale on one of my tube sets clear doing that.
I recently had someone reply to my comment who had a channel with over 7000 videos of him drinking a sip of water. Each was different and taken over many years. People are weird.
Some company makes a permanent glue that uses an ultra violet light pen. I am not sure of the name of the glue pen but I thought it might be helpful to fix the crack on your fan blade.
