322 Educational Gear Set
General Information
The following information has been collected from original newspapers, catalogs, and magazines, some of which are freely available for reference below. The rest can be found in the site’s gallery. No aggregate catalogs (BrickLink, Brickset, etc.) were used.
Instructions: Unknown (While linked, the quality is too low to confidently say the form number)
Advertised Part Count(s): Likely 100-110 pieces(via 321/5 and 001's piece count), though no currently accessible source gives a piece count.
First Year Confirmed Available: 1969(USA)
USA Only.
Most Likely Retirement Date: 1969(USA)
Currently, the retirement date is hard to confirm. However, given the last appearance of Samsonite educational ads in education magazines like Instructor is in late 1969(and given they usually appeared in the middle of the year), the 060 was likely retired by 1969.
Last Year Seen Available: 1969
Aliases: Educational Gear Set
Retail Price(s): Unknown
Rarity Score(Index): 6/7
Known Box/Packing Variants
There are no known variants, as the logo has already been updated for 1969:
Box/Overview
Following the 321 School Set and 060 Jumbo Brick School Set, the 322 Educational Gear Set is the first(confirmed) education set incorporating gears. Of course gears were available to schools beforehand(i.e. a school ordered three 005 Discovery Sets in 1966, for example), this was the first that had a dedicated lesson plan prepared similar to the one the 321 School Set used.
The 322's box is also similar to the previous 321:
The 322 was not only advertised as a companion set to the 321, but also the 107 Reversible Motor Set(which likely didn't have special education packaging).
Contents
While the below example is incomplete, it's a good example as to the sets original inventory:
The exclusive element of this set was two bricks tied together by a string. My example is missing the string:
The 322 also contained its own instructional manual:
