Share your Fan Collecting Heritage

[Daniel G.]

This upcoming new year has reminded me a lot of my fan collecting heritage. I just thought it would be interesting to hear others' stories. Here's mine:

I've always had a fascination with fans. Some of the first fans I ever saw were the old ones at my uncle's house. From the time I was almost 11, I had a dream of collecting fans. Brian Hicks inspired me at the time through his YouTube videos. That dream became a reality years later.

On February 28th, 2011, I was coming home from school. As we turned onto my street, I notice my neighbor has some light fixtures and a ceiling fan sitting on her front porch. I went over and inquired about the fan, and she told me I could have it as I saw some electricians installing a newer fan.

I brought it home and cleaned it all up. I plugged it in to find the bearings had turned into rotten eggs over the many years of use it had. I was fine with that because it was free and it was my first collected fan. The fan has been since parted out due to the nightmare I ran into attempting to repair it with no prior experience of fan repair. How I ran into the nightmare is a long story. But we'll just say my first attempt in repairing a ceiling fan gave me good advice on what NOT to do when repairing one.

I did go to Habitat in search for a fan to start a collection. I had no luck the many times I went there, and always came home with that awful feel of disappointment. Part of why I was feeling so disappointed was because I was extremely picky. If a fan was missing something small such as the mounting bracket, switch cap, or screws, I wouldn't get it. But on August 12, 2011, I finally came home with a fan! It was a BB Hunter Coastal Breeze. It was missing the switch cap and mounting screws...That's when I learned not to be so picky when it comes to buying a used fan.

Since them, when ever I visit the ReStore, I always come home with a fan or two in the backseat, wether it's missing minor parts or not.

[fancollector12]

I have a long history of ceiling fan collecting. It all started when my parents took me to Home Depot in my area and strapped me into the Orange shopping cart's baby seat. We went past the fan section and I instantly became fascinated with fans. My parents got me a catalog in 1998, and before I even started reading, I looked at the pictures of the fans. I later cut up the catalog (wish I hadn't now). One time there were a bunch of Hampton Bay Huntington I's on display. The sales guy turned the Polished Brass one on for me on Low, and gave me a Home Depot apron with my name on it.

My first ceiling fan was in my old house: I had asked for one for Christmas for my bedroom, and for Christmas, Santa brought me a White 42" Hunter Low Profile with the White Bullet Hunter Spotlight Kit. That was in 1997 or 1998.

For Christmas in 2001, I asked for the same fan, but in a 52" size, and Santa brought me the fan, same light kit, but a White Low Profile V. This was the first fan installed in our new house (the one we live in now).

Finally, for Christmas 2011 (this Christmas), Santa brought me a Casablanca Panama II IT3. It has the K4S with Nuage Blanc Satin Glass and the Advantouch Remote Control. It also has Dark Cherry Blades. This is my first Casablanca.

[Cole S.]

Been interested in things that spin since infancy, fans just really caught on. Was into portables only until I stumbled across the main site here in like 2006, which inspired me to get into ceiling fans which is my main focus now, though I won't pass up a good portable when I see it. That's pretty much it, I've gone into detail in numerous other threads on this topic with first fans and yada yada yada.

[Rick M.]

When I was a baby, I was always intrigued by rotating objects - wheels, cars, infant bottles rolling across the floor...and then my parents introduced a ceiling fan to me one day. Can't remember exactly what fan it was, but it might have been the little 42" GE vent fan (CEC?) in the dining room of my old house. Later, my dad took me to Home Depot to see the entire fan display, and I think that's what really made ceiling fans catch on for me. We started going every once in a while to see the new models (this was back in the 90s). I started collecting the fan brochures they gave away, all the way until 2008...

Up until I found this site, I really didn't know much about ceiling fans, except for 90s Hampton Bays and a few Hunters I could identify. I knew Casablanca and a few others existed, but I never paid much attention to them when I was little.

Then, one summer afternoon in 2008, I was bored and I typed in 'Hampton Bay Landmark' on Yahoo Image search, and a picture of Adam's Landmark came up. It was this one:
www.vintageceilingfans.com/hamptonbay4blademid80slandmarkceilingfan.html

Then I started looking through all of Adam's fans...literally, I spent hours on end looking through every single fan and reading the descriptions. This answered a lot of my questions about the older fans I could not identify based off my previous Hampton Bay knowledge - things like what GE vents are, what cane blades are, etc...and before you knew it, I had a pretty good idea of what some of the vintage fan manufacturers were, and I could later identify vintage fans.

Then in February 2009, a friend of my dad's had a dusty Crest 2000 Series ceiling fan sitting in his basement. After I expressed some interest in the fan, he kindly gave it to me for free...that was my first collected fan. I was excited that it had stencil blades. ;D

After that I started checking eBay, thrift stores, and other places for vintage fans. I still to this day don't have a huge collection, but I'm happy with the ones I have. I hope I can find a place to actually install them some day - maybe in an unfinished basement or barn or something like that.

So that's my story.