Prior to the 1970s, pretty much everything on the market was a great product by subsequent standards. Casablanca has a reputation of being one of the very best from the 1970s into the 2000s. Hunter's Original cast iron fans still have a cult following to this day. Emerson always made a solid product, and there are several other American and import brands that were great. SMC was one of the early players of imported fans from Asia into North America. Like most of these products that started coming over in the late 1960s/early 1970s, it was always a solidly-built performance product. They made great budget-based fans through the 1980s; by the 1990s they'd started really cheapening the product. Even then it was still a decent fan for the money, and the appearance maintained what I call a great "vintage appeal", meaning the products kept a lot of key details and styling features from earlier variants rather than being constantly updated like most other ceiling fan products of the period. In today's terms, fans like the one shown here were a pretty good value for their original retail cost. Decent build and decent performance, but they are far from being superior or top quality in any category. Because of the "vintage appeal" I mentioned, a lot of fan enthusiasts and collectors enjoy SMC products, but there's not much value or general public desire for them.

@@vfandm Thanks for the reply! Much appreciated! I'm looking on ebay at vintage ceiling fans sold and I'm blown away at what they're selling for. I've worked on refurbishing sewing machines. Think I'll grab some local marketplace fans to test, clean and flip! I'm eyeballing a vintage Casablanca now for $20. Hmmm....