Growing up in California in the 60's, my Dad didn't have a Weber. He had the "Big Boy" style bbq where the cooking grate is about 2 inches above the hot coals.
As a young boy it was my job to stand guard with the water bottle to extinguish the flame flare ups whenever he was cooking chicken. The chicken was always charred, blackened and had a burned flavor.
Fast forward to the early 80's when I purchased my first Weber kettle. It was a basic black, daisy wheel kettle with a dog dish ash pan, purchased from Ace Hardware. That's when I discovered chicken was not suppose to have the burned, blackened look and taste when barbecued. A couple of years later I upgraded to a kettle that had ash sweeps. Then finally in 1999, I upgraded to a red mist Master Touch. I still own and use that red mist M/T to this day. Each time I upgraded I would just leave my old kettle at the curb with a free sign on it.
I only owned one Weber kettle at a time until early 2016. A relative gave me his old MBH Weber and I began searching for information on vintage Weber kettles. That led me to the WKC and well, the rest is history. I would't be surprised if the WKC members own in excess of 1,000 vintage Weber kettles. That estimate may very well be low.................