ticonderoga
"Just one more"
Is there any record of how many canoes Old Town made for and shipped to A & F in NY? What years did they ship to them? Are these relatively rare or fairly common. Thanks
Abercrombie and Fitch by Old Town
- Thread starter ticonderoga
- Start date
Kathryn Klos
squirrel whisperer
Hi Ticonderoga,
Many of the companies that carried sporting goods carried canoes by the builders who sold through dealerships-- Old Town, Rushton, Morris... most of the larger builders. I've seen A&F tags on Morris canoes from the first years of the twentieth century and assume A&F carried Old Town from that time as well... and probably continued to carry them until whenever it was that they no longer carried such things (the 60s?-- dunno). Unless a record of this sort of shipment was kept separately, the only way to know how many canoes were shipped to A&F in NY would be to pick through the build records... which would be a substantial project as there are over 200,000 in the records we have on CD, which go into the 1970s.
I wouldn't say that the Old Town canoes shipped to A&F in NYC were "rare"... but at the same time, they'd be no more common than canoes shipped to other big city dealerships--- but this is only an opinion. If you're trying to determine if your canoe might be worth more to a buyer having been shipped to A&F in NY, there wouldn't be any extra value unless the canoe had a fancy early A&F brass tag-- and even then, the added value might not be much money-wise but might make the canoe more interesting and thereby more sale-able. For instance, if a buyer was looking at two canoes of similar age and condition and one had a nice old A&F tag, the buyer might be more inclined to buy the A&F canoe. It's also possible that someone with a special connection to NYC might want a canoe shipped to that destination, but Old Town also shipped to other dealerships in NYC, such as Macy's.
I hope this helps... Benson might have more answers regarding the business dealings between OT and A&F.
Kathy
Many of the companies that carried sporting goods carried canoes by the builders who sold through dealerships-- Old Town, Rushton, Morris... most of the larger builders. I've seen A&F tags on Morris canoes from the first years of the twentieth century and assume A&F carried Old Town from that time as well... and probably continued to carry them until whenever it was that they no longer carried such things (the 60s?-- dunno). Unless a record of this sort of shipment was kept separately, the only way to know how many canoes were shipped to A&F in NY would be to pick through the build records... which would be a substantial project as there are over 200,000 in the records we have on CD, which go into the 1970s.
I wouldn't say that the Old Town canoes shipped to A&F in NYC were "rare"... but at the same time, they'd be no more common than canoes shipped to other big city dealerships--- but this is only an opinion. If you're trying to determine if your canoe might be worth more to a buyer having been shipped to A&F in NY, there wouldn't be any extra value unless the canoe had a fancy early A&F brass tag-- and even then, the added value might not be much money-wise but might make the canoe more interesting and thereby more sale-able. For instance, if a buyer was looking at two canoes of similar age and condition and one had a nice old A&F tag, the buyer might be more inclined to buy the A&F canoe. It's also possible that someone with a special connection to NYC might want a canoe shipped to that destination, but Old Town also shipped to other dealerships in NYC, such as Macy's.
I hope this helps... Benson might have more answers regarding the business dealings between OT and A&F.
Kathy
The short answer is yes but it would not be easy to count them as Kathy mentioned. You would need to buy a set of the scanned Old Town build records from http://store.wcha.org/Old-Town-Build-Records-on-CD-ROM.html and then search them one at a time to get an exact count. This is not quick or easy but it can be done as described in some of the messages at http://forums.wcha.org/showthread.php?4641 by Roger Young who undertook a similar research project to find all of the four and eight foot long model canoes. Let me know if you plan to take this on and I can offer some specific tools and suggestions to simplify the process.
Old Town shipped canoes to A. & F. for many years but I don't know the exact range. You will also need to decide if you want to include Carleton canoes in this. There was a period when Old Town owned Carleton which allowed them to ship Carleton canoes to A. & F. and Old Town canoes to Macy's so that these retailers were technically not competing with each other. This is the same as pickup trucks from Chevrolet and GMC dealers today.
A quick search of this forum for "Abercrombie" will show over twenty references to canoes that shipped there. This implies that they are probably not exceptionally rare or especially common.
Benson
