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BoKu
Trad climber
Douglas Flat, CA
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Topic Author's Original Post - Aug 25, 2009 - 01:14am PT
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I was at a thrift store in Angels Camp, and I found an old oval carabiner marked "EIGER USA". Has anybody heard of this brand? It's obviously pretty old, and I just wonder if it has any value as a collectible.
Thanks, Bob "BoKu" K.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
Monrovia, CA
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Aug 25, 2009 - 01:16am PT
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Ya mean my rack is valuable?
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Aug 25, 2009 - 01:18am PT
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They were made in the mid 1970s, and are much like the SMC ovals. I may have one or two that I use for racking wired nuts. I vaguely recall that they had problems with the pins that held the gate on falling out.
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Scared Silly
Trad climber
UT
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Aug 25, 2009 - 01:20am PT
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Eiger gear is great for ditching. Never had a piece I would not leave on route.
A couple of weekends ago I spied a biner on an old pin. Been there for ages. I laughed cause it was near a bunch of new fangled sport routes that were seeing lots of crowds. The biner was a Bedayn - Now that is a collectors item.
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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Aug 25, 2009 - 01:24am PT
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I have many. . .
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mongrel
Trad climber
Truckee, CA
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Aug 25, 2009 - 01:24am PT
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Older than mid-70s for sure. I had Eiger biners just like that, around 1970 or earlier. But not a collectible. Now a Bedayan oval, maybe. One of those old ovals we used to refer to as Liberty biners (which would liberate you from your life), but I don't think it was Eigers. Might have been.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Aug 25, 2009 - 01:24am PT
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Only half?
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Aug 25, 2009 - 01:36am PT
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It is sometimes fun to display arcane but quite effective techniques such as the carabiner brake and the hip belay, particularly on cliffs frequented by novices. I draw the line at demonstrating body rappels and piton placement, though.
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Aug 25, 2009 - 02:33am PT
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I have a number of eigers, if they will finance my retirement, then I'm all for them as collectibles. BITD they they had the rep as being total nothing, "Eiger death Biner™" was the parlance.
It would be fun, Boku, to break one with your device, and see if they really live down to their rep.
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hobo_dan
Social climber
Minnesota
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Aug 25, 2009 - 08:50am PT
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I'm with Tami- The Eiger Ovals and the Liberty 'biners were half the price of Chouinard
That said- throw it up on Ebay with some Collector title and watch to see what happens
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Aug 25, 2009 - 09:01am PT
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I've got a few Eigers, but they're not things of beauty so I can't picture them as collectable.
Now, the first-generation Chouinard biners are newer than Eigers, but had a more original design.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Aug 25, 2009 - 10:43am PT
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Now a biner-brake rappel, or for that matter a dulfersitz -- everybody should
know how to do those.
Although the last time I built a biner brake, using modern asymmetrical wiregates
instead of good old Bedayn/Eiger/SMC ovals, the rig looked scary and unsafe.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 25, 2009 - 10:50am PT
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The only novel thing about the Eiger biners was the anodized colors on them (red and blue). The only other anodized biners around at the end of the sixties were the orange SMC and REI versions. I still carry a very faded red Eiger on my old Dolt piton nut tool.
When I first went into the Summit Hut in Tucson back in 1970 to buy some hardware, I bought five Cassin steel ovals, five SMC's and five Eigers. I keep the Eiger around to retain that memory. They aren't da kine however and boy did those suckers stretch open with ease, even under body weight!
Certainly collectible as few biners were available BITD. If you happen to have some that are in mint condition, then you might have some real value. Beyond that, toss your little goodie into the Ebay and see what you can haul up to the beach!
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Studly
Trad climber
WA
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Aug 25, 2009 - 11:10am PT
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Hey there say, the Eiger lockers were the kine! The regular Eiger biners may not have been as quality, but the lockers were bitching. I loved mine. If you got some Eiger lockers, I'll buy them from you. Use em on my climbing wall or some such.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Aug 25, 2009 - 11:17am PT
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A big selling point for Chouinard biners was that, unlike Eigers and their ilk,
you could open the gate under body weight. That was a key feature for aid.
A Colorado company, CMC (?), also made a blue-anodized oval biner in the early
70s, with the same dimensions as other ovals. The CMC biner added a new feature,
however -- a sort of cowling on the gate that supposedly gave much better minor-
axis strength, a weak point for other ovals.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 25, 2009 - 11:29am PT
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That would be CMI- Colorado Mountain Industries. Do you have one of their biners to show? I can't say that I have ever seen one though the blue anodizing is totally familiar. I wonder how long they were in the biner market?
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Aug 25, 2009 - 11:42am PT
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Thanks Steve, you're right it was CMI. The only ones I ever saw were blue.
CMI also made a line of chrome-moly pitons, the first such competitors to
Chouinard (apart from the much different Leeper and Dolt designs). SMC
and Clog pitons followed later.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Aug 25, 2009 - 11:47am PT
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I'll fish around my gear closet tonight, and see whether an old CMI still exists.
I kept one for a while for dog purposes, after its gate-pin had fallen out.
Meanwhile ... this is either an Eiger or a Bedayn (pre-Eiger) carabiner, with
a Dolt hollow brake bar. Brake bars were the thing until we figured out that
a 6-biner brake was way safer.
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Studly
Trad climber
WA
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Aug 25, 2009 - 11:53am PT
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I still have my old brake bar and in fact used it a while back for fun. Why did they go out of use? Would the biner gate fail or some such?
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Aug 25, 2009 - 11:59am PT
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Two problems with the brake bar system were (1) you were weighting the
biner in a direction it might not be very strong -- OK for body weight, but
what if a fall somehow happened; and (2) sometimes the rope would pull
sideways in a way that opened the gate just a little; you could picture worse
things happening if the wrong combination of pressures occurred.
6-biner brakes, on the other hand, are so redundant they seem bombproof
(with ovals).
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