Re: ~ Plomb tool picture thread - show your stuff!
Yet more Plomb trivia......in my comment above, I mentioned possibly trading my partially restored pre-war large #9999 Plomb box, plus some $ to be fair trade, for a really extra-nice condition post-war large Plomb #9998 box.
One of the members here had posted a photo of one with its original red paint, silk-screened Plomb logo lettering, etc, which was what I'd prefer to have, just purely as a 'personal aesthetic preference'. That one had a bit of paint wear, to be sure, but not badly so, it looked generally quite nice.
I received a 'private message' offering a possible trade involving a #9989 Plomb box, the more common smaller style, which really isn't what I'd hoped to find......oh, well.....
I got curious, tho.......I've not been here very long, so I thought I'd use the 'search' feature, and, trying a search for the #9999 large Plomb box, I found only one item, my own comment above.
Am I the only one here who has one of those? Are they even less common these days than I'd imagined?
(I have to admit that I thought a search would turn up some number of nice well-preserved original, or nicely refinished ones, owned by various of the folks here)
So........I'd ask a Plomb trivia question, if I may, just from curiosity........that large box is shown in the 1936 Plonb catalogue, and also in an original 1937 catalogue I have here, yet the later style (rounded edges, like the post-war ones) appears in the 1940 catalogue.
Does anyone have 1933-'35 catalogues, or '38-'39 catalogues, which could indicate the years in which that early style large #9999 box was produced?
Is that box a relative rarity, compared to the later style?
That would seem 'plausible', given that its likely that fewer mechanics would buy a large tool chest in the depression years of the mid-'30s, compared to the relative emergence from the depression by 1938 and '39, as munitions production contracts were beginning to build up, particularly the contract production for England, and the economic conditions for mechanics improved.
It could be said, also, that the early style #9999 box was 'ugly' with its square corners, and might not have sold very well, leading to the re-design to the much nicer-looking #9998 large box.
Yes, this is just trivia......but its a teeny-tiny bit of Plomb Tool Co. history, and, well, I'm just curious.
cheers
Carla
