Vintage fishing poles

Question
Hello..  I have roughly 277 vintage fishing poles, I would like to find values on these, is there any books to show values?  Some have stickers on them showing where they were bought and most have were they were made..  Please help?

Answer
Hi Jennifer,

Yes, depending on what type of rods and what they are made of you will need a variety of books.  An example is the book on bamboo rods written by author D. B. Homel.   You can search for fishing rod identification and evaluation books for others.  There is a set of books on vintage fishing gear produced by a collector in Oklahoma, but I tend to think the values shown are on the high side compared to what I have seen; it is useful for identification.

You can also find web sites that will provide the authors evaluations of various rods and web sites that list rods for sale.  You can find discussion forums that specialize in various types of rods, fiberglass, bamboo, graphite, saltwater, fly , casting, spinning, etc.  Many of these have value discussion threads.

You can also find books, articles, corporate histories and other documents that will help identify maunufacturers and retailers.  It helps to sell the rods if you have a history on them.

It will take some work to identify and evaluate 277 rods.  If you can group them into smaller  subsets, it will be helpful.

Thanks,  Joe