Okay, I just got back from Jersey--I unexpectedly spent the night after I met the two gentleman who run the fan store.
Before I go on, I'm going to say this: the two gentlemen, and I, are in agreement right now that it would be best for me to not post their names, or their company's name, or the location of their company, or any other identifying information. So please, no one send me messages asking where to go to pick up fans for cheap. These fans will be sold at fair prices, not cheap prices, and not at this time.
Sometime during the next month or two, I will be going back up to Jersey and spending two weeks going through all the fans (they are spread amongst six warehouses) and inventorying them all and organizing them and photographing them and such, at which time their owner will decide what he wants to sell, and via what vehicle, and at what prices. So, again, I'm not advertising fans for sale here. I'm just going to talk about what I saw.
Okay, so, I was up in Jersey to pick up my new car (which is very nice, btw), and I went to this fan place on my way back. It is a a lighting store--a very nice, high-end place. The guy who runs it--we'll call him John--has been in this business for a loooong time...longer than any of us (save for Adrian) has been alive. John has several hundred vintage fans, almost all NIB, sitting in six different warehouses--Emerson's, Hunter's, Panasonic's, Casablanca's, Murray Feiss's, Homestead's, Beverly Hills's, Encon's--you name it, he probably has it (or has had it at some point in the past).
Here are some highlights of the insanely awesome shiite John has (I'm basically doing this just to make everyone drool):
-- CASABLANCA --
John was the world's third largest Casablanca dealer back in the 1980s, and operated internationally; he personally knows Burton A. Burton, Casablanca's founder.
These are just a few of the many:
* Broadway Limited's
* Commodore Vanderbilt's
* Panama's
* Delta II's
* Lady Delta's
* Ventura's
* Zephyr's
* Columbia II's
* 20th Century's
* Centennial Edition's (the $3000 ones in the wood crate)
* Spirit of Saturn's
* Steath's
* Victorian's (any of you seen a copper/bright brass model?
etc. etc. etc.
Also, from Casablanca:
* Years worth of dealer literature (including one full of shots of the Casablanca fans in Burton A. Burton's house)
* Years worth of sales brochures
* Casablanca rugs, clocks, and bar signs
* Two Casablanca trucks and a van (no, not plastic model cars--actual vehicles)
* Hordes of light kits and glass
* Spare, and extra-length, downrods
* Blades up the wazoo
-- PANASONIC --
* Several hundred Panasonic's, of varying models and colors and sizes (maybe even the one I'm looking for, buried somewhere)
* Sales literature/brochures (I was able to confirm, btw, that the fan I'm looking for IS, in fact, a Panasonic)
-- HOMESTEAD --
I know very little about Homestead's, so I only remember one model name off the top of my head...
* Universal's
...of which there were several; there were also a bunch of other models
Also, from Homestead:
* Light kits
* Blades
* Other spare parts
-- EMERSON --
Nearly one hundred...
* 1895 Series
...42", 52"; regular, ornate; 3-speed, 4-speed; old-canopy, new-canopy; cane blades, regular blades; every color known to man...
(I bought a few of the 4-speed 52" models, including a brown/brass one with cane blades)
Also, from Emerson:
* Tons of spare parts (downrods and such)
* Lots of spare blades (including the rare cane ones)
I'm too tired to name every single brand and model--but there are hundreds of these fans, all NIB, and hundreds of NOS spare parts too. There were so many stacked so high in so many warehouses, that I don't even know what all is there. I asked about a few in particular (my Panasonic, Dan's Tara, my Beverly Hills, etc.), and the answer was "Maybe"; because there are too many fans to know what all is there.
He also--and this is the creme de la creme in my view--has this:
In the late 1970s, when Emerson invented the blenderfan (which was NOT called the "Universal Series", btw, it was called the "Heat Fan"), they sent each dealer a self-contained slide-projector unit (a slide projector with a built-in screen and speaker) which came pre-loaded with a movie Emerson made about the blenderfan--it's about 20 minutes long, and is a BUNCH of photos of blenders, with an audio voiceover telling all about them...well, I have it here (on loan, where it will receive only the very best care), and I have to say it is the coolest thing a fan collector could ever hope to see. If I knew where in heck my digital camera was, I'd take a picture of it. VERY, VERY COOL. Here is a website showing the projector unit and movie cartridge I'm talking about: I have a damaged tape thing that I'm looking to repair, and then convert. I have a unit, which is essentially a self-contained slide projector with a little screen and a speaker, and it ate one of the tapes that goes with it. The tape cartridge looks a ton like an 8-track cartridge, only thicker. It has a magnetic audio tape strip, like an 8-track or a cassette, and it also has a filmstrip of slides (which display on the screen as the audio is played). My guess is that the audio track contains some special frequency which, when played, triggers the slide portion to advance to the next slide. Anyhow, the machine started to eat the tape, so I'm looking to get the whole thing, slides and audio, converted to DVD format.
John really knows his stuff. He knows more about more fans than Dan and me and Brian and a whole mess of other folks put together. It's insane. I have never met someone who knows as much about them, or has so much literature and memorabilia saved, or happens to have several hundred NOS fans sitting in their basement, before. My head it still spinning.
Anyhow, point is that I was knocked-off-my-feet impressed, and that John and the other gentleman (who we'll call Jack) are very knowledgeable and extremely friendly and hospitable, and that they are sitting on top of the motherload.
Drool, beeatches ;D.
;D 
