Saturday morning, bronze class day for Sweet Pea........... on my way back home after dropping her off, I stopped off at a funky "swap meet" that sets up every Saturday at the Chimicum Community Center. Out of all the "junk" I spottted a vintage Optimus stove box. Inside was a complete, never used, and mint condition old Swedish Optimus kerosene stove! I won't say what I paid for it, but I almost dropped my wallet trying to get my money out as fast as I could! I've actually coveted these very stoves for years but the price tags for even heavily used ones are more than I can justify paying.
This stove dates back to the early 1970's and it is from the very last run of the old style, brass, kerosene stoves that Optimus made. Everything is there......... all of the instructions, vent picks. parts, etc., even the box is in near perfect shape! It still has all of the paper parts wrappers and cardboard packing as well. The guy I bought it from said he opened it up and assembled it once, but never fueled or fired it. It is almost unheard of to find one of these stoves still new in the box.
For some reason Optimus stoves from the 1970's have middle eastern script on the tanks, labels and instructions. They must have had a pretty good market in that part of the world at that time.
I'd love to fire this up, but I think I'll ponder the potential collector's value of keeping it in the new condition....... These Optimus No. 45's are considered the "sexiest" of all the old Optimus stoves by the hard core stove collectors.
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