Your introduction strikes some very familiar chords. The nice thing about tackle from the 70's is that it gets more affordable as we grow older, and that much of it is of such high quality that it is still almost as good as new. If you can avoid treading on them or shutting them in car doors, the fibreglass rods last forever, with only the occasional rewhipping, and ABU and DAM (and to some extent Mitchell) reels were so magnificently over-engineered that most still perform perfectly.
It looks like you have work to do in the centrepin department, but as a youngster of a mere 50 there's plenty of time for that.