My 1965 Kirby D50 is my pride and joy...
It's basically like a brand-new Kirby D50 with a nice gleam to the mirrorlike polish, new bearings, motor brushes, brushroll, cord, Amodel fan and aftermarket tan bag (since tan OEM D50 bags are hard to come by). It sits proudly in my foyer for all to see. I recently converted it to take HEPA bags by having a zipper put on the back of the bag in addition to sticking a NOS Kirby Legend II mini-emptor with a fill tube and bag adaptor onto the machine, merging 20th century technology with the 21st century. It performs very well.
Anyway, my wife and I had a couple of her friends and their husbands/fiancees over for a dinner at our house. They were surprised to see that I had such an old vacuum sitting in our foyer. They were going on about how Dyson was the bee's knees and couldn't believe that such an old vacuum could outclean a Dyson or why I'd have something as old as our parents hanging around. After dinner I actually took out my wife's Animal 2 and brought my D50 into the den and did a quick demo by sprinkling some coffee grounds onto the white carpet. While the Dyson performed well, the 55-year-old Kirby performed just as good, maybe even better. They saw that and I also explained that, unlike any Kirby, there will be very few (if any) Dysons that would make it this long due to the plastic construction, lack of repair parts after so many years and a motor that will not last as long or hold up to abuse as long as a Kirby. I explained that the performance of bagless machines degrade over time due to the filters, which are expensive to replace, and virtually nobody ever bothers replacing them. I also told them how easily a Kirby could be rebuilt by anyone with average mechanical aptitude (though I might be overestimating its simplicity as I tear into all sorts of things as an HVACR tech). It was kind of like a Kirby sales demo in my own home, though I wasn't actually selling a Kirby, lol.
My point is that the average person doesn't think Kirby is anything special. In fact, they think it's old fashioned, outdated and can't keep up with something as "cool-looking", space-age and popular as a Dyson. I think my D50 (and other vintage direct-air vacs) would probably go into the trash heap if the average person got a hold of it because they don't know any better. Same with my other vintage collections (PCs, fans, countertop appliances).
As for the price of repair parts, I've found that kirbyneeds on eBay seems to be reasonably priced for the most part. In my view, it's shipping that makes it a bit spendy, but that's because it costs good money now to ship anything these days. It's been a while, but I think it was kirbyneeds who combined a few things I've ordered in one sitting into one package to save on shipping costs for the both of us, which was nice.
