Saturday, April 27, 2013

RARE GRIPPER FIND


Here's a few pics of a recent gripper purchase I made from a lady in California.

This pair of Sears & Roebuck hand grippers are from 1986 and they were in the original box
with the original instructions inside.

As a collector all types and brands of hand grippers are significant in some way or another.
One of the main purposes of my collection is to try and have a visual display of hand grippers
that will show not only the history of hand grips but also how they have evolved over the years.

The earliest reference I've seen for a torsion spring hand gripper is the late 1920's from several
early vintage muscle magazines such as Physical Culture and Strength.

I plan on doing blog posts on some other gripper finds I've cAme across over the years and share
the images with my followers and anyone who happens to stop by a for a visit to my blog!

Hope you enjoyed this short article and pics!!!

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE GRIP!!!

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Two Significant Gripper Donations!


Wanted to do a blog post on 2 very significant gripper donations from 2 very generous individuals.

Richard Sorin, long time friend, collector, Grip Legend and owner and founder of Sorinex.com donated a rare Ed Jubinville gripper to my Grip Museum several weeks ago and it is pictured here just as I received it in the mail. Ed Jubinville started making grippers I believe in the 70's and his signature characteristic was he welded the handles to the spring. The gripper had solid steel handles with no knurling. The wire diameter is .283" and the strength difficulty is around that of an easy COC #3. The springs on these grippers were known to break during use so one had to be cautious when using these grippers. I bought my very first Jubinville gripper back in the late 80's and several years later it snapped and I threw the gripper away. Little did I know that one day I would become one of the largest hand gripper collectors in the world. By the way, Ed Jubinville was deeply involved in old time physical culture and was very involved in the arm wrestling scenes when Bob O'Leary headed the American Arm Wrestling Association, AAA.

The other donation was from Adam Moyers who is a grip enthusiast, collector and long time Grip Board member. Adam donated a single stamp #3 to my collection also pictured here. He had the gripper rated by Matt Cannon of Cannon PowerWorks and it rated at 142 lbs. I rated the gripper again myself 3 different times and came up with 145 lbs.

I would like to publicly THANK Richard and Adam from the bottom of my heart for donating these grippers to my museum!!! In today's world it's becoming rather rare to find people so generous and willing to contribute to others for a good cause. That cause being that I'm preserving the history of all types and brands of hand grippers for the future generations to come. My collection will not be sold and any gripper donated will stay as part of the collection to never be sold or traded. Those that donate any type of hand gripper will be recognized here on my Blog and often times mentioned in a video on my You Tube channel.

Hope you ENJOY this article and the pictures!!! If you have a hand gripper of any brand or type that you would like to donated to my Grip Museum please feel free to contact me @ joemusselwhite2@gmail.com and we can make arrangements for you to send me the gripper(s)!

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE GRIP!!!