Well, it appears that we differ in opinions of what is "old" :-)

100 year old boxes, I will agree with as old... :-)

These will be metal end plates often, never plastic. They may well be worn out, and may need a forklift. You can get portable holder stands, which you just sidle up to theses days.

Those made with nitrate shells about the period of WWI - WWII (I'm not a total know everything expert) were "no better" in [stevethesqueeze] opinion apparently that ones made recently (I assume that is after the 1980's). Rolf Harris has his box explode into flames on stage under the heat of the lights (there is a thread you can search for on this) - this doubtless was a nitrate plastic covered box - after the fire it was still playable though!

Acetate (when used for film stock it was called "safety film") plastic covered ones came later - it seems that modern ones don't use nitrate - exactly what they use I don't know, but there are many different types of plastics nowadays.

After WWII, in Italy, many box makers had worked in aeroplane factories, and some of those workers now knew about making things in aluminum and streamlined shapes. For me the peak of box perfection was in the 1950's - 1960's. I have half a dozen boxen! :-)

My favourite is a 32 bass Settimo Sporani - dry/wet treble switches.

Brillant! LOUD!!! Louder than many other full 120 bass boxen! Sweet tone!!! But many guitarists want to play in keys that it cannot...

So I have the Settimo Soprani 48 (4/12) bass, with barritone reed added. But many guitarists still want to play in keys that it cannot...

So I have a Noble. Bought from EBay. Full 120 bass with 2 bass registers - unfortunately no wet setting, but a barritone/violin setup, that is tuned sligtly wet by the octave. Minature! Yes, half the size, and weight of a normal 120bass, not much bigger than the 32 bass above! Smaller piano waterfall keys - designed for an advanced child student, so they must be relatively rare.

I have a few others, including an 80 bass, 2 Excelsoir, a 3 reeder and a 4 reeder. All those I mention are are 1940-1960 models. I would NEVER have been to afford a single modern box, even secondhand. I also have a "Hero" style Chinese 8 bass wet tuned octave and a half keyboard. This one is amazing in what it can do, including all the bellows shake techniques!

I have a range of boxes that suit MANY differnt styles of music, for far less than a single new box, or even a recent secondhand one - if you can find them in Australia. The Excelsoirs are the previous models to the current styles, even they are physically old, the parts are still available from Excelsoir, and I know a guy who worked in the factory! (Primo)

Robin