ABU Record Ambassadeur 5000

The Record Ambassadeur 5000 is the first Ambassadeur: the round baitcaster that ABU of Svängsta, Sweden, put on sale in 1952, carrying the name of the Record reels the company had been building since the early 1940s. The earliest version, known as the MOD SG, was sold in Europe only in 1952 and 1953; the reel reached American tackle shops in 1954 through Garcia, ABU's importer.

The very first examples have a solid grey spool and grey star drag, and later ones gained red spool flanges and then a red star drag. Mechanically it is the simple, bushing-supported design that every later Ambassadeur refined, with a star drag, centrifugal brake and worm-driven level wind, and a clean one still casts and fishes.

The market treats it as a collector piece, though. In our latest snapshot complete standard Record 5000s were listed at roughly $450 to $900, and documented MOD SG reels were asking several times that.

Originality and documentation set the price, so buy from sellers who can identify the exact version and photograph the foot, side plates and spool.