My McElroy P-500 bug with the rare original shipping box arrived today, and when I picked the box up off the front porch, my heart sank to my knees: There was the distinctive “clunk” inside the box that you hear when some idiot fails to adequately pack a heavy item (like a 4-pound hung of cast iron and steel), and said item has mashed down the packing and is littler rattling around in the shipping box.
I have annoyed some eBay sellers with my anal retentive instructions on shipping bugs, particularly the rarer ones. I ask that they remove the weights from the pendulum and tie the pendulum securely to the base of the key. I also ask them to securely pack it so the paddle doesn't break off due to an impact inside the shipping box. Generally, once you remove the weights from the pendulum and secure it, all you need to do then is to wrap the key in several layers of bubble wrap, and you're good to go. The bubble-wrapped key then needs to be packed in some decent packing — which does not include crumpled up newspapers. Those will pack down, and even a well bubble-wrapped key can sustain damage if it hits hard enough.
On opening the shipping box, my heart sank further. The seller put the Mac Key in the wooden box, and putt in a couple handfuls of crumpled newspaper — which probably packed down to nothing the first couple of bumps the key experienced.
The key was hitting violently inside the wood box; the top pivot adjustment struck the wooden slide-on lid of the box so hard it split the entire lid in half. It also split off the rear edge of the wooden box. The key itself suffered no damage — thankfully.
The key itself if gorgeous; it looks as though it never spent a night outside its box. This key is 70 years and it looks like it rolled off Mac's assembly line last week. Amazing. You can almost smell how new it is, it is like trip in Mr. Whoopee's Wayback Machine to 1941.
The box has the original owners name and callsign on it, and some of the ships he worked on. I'm still trying to make those out, they're in very faded ink.
So far I've glued the split-off back edge of the box, and I'll try to glue the lid together later this evening. It should glue together just fine. I'm still tempted to leave the seller some nasty feedback; I won't return the key, it just pissed me off to have it damaged due to his carelessness.
So how did the key original travel safely in a wooden box?? The original key was secured to the bottom of the box with a small bolt and screw. This particular model key had two mounting holes in the base for securing it to a desk; McElroy's factory used one of those holes to keep the key safe in transit.
The box isn't as nice as the padded and velour-lined box that Vibroplex was selling for its keys at the time. Those were designed to carry the key as well as keep it safe; the McElroy box was simply for shipping the key. There are understandably fewer of the Mac wooden boxes around today.
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