Hi I have lived with Type 1 diabetes since 1983 and have been a diabetes nurse educator for 20 years. I have a fascination with what we used to use to mage this disease compared to what we have today and trying to put together a display case for our clinic. If you have any gear you would like to get rid of please send me a message!!!
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Hi @chamming. Welcome to FUD!
I have a few old things. But I don’t have the lancing device you mentioned in another post. I used to have that same type of lancing device, but I eventually moved to just doing it manually because it was easier to carry just the lancets in my small pack, instead of the entire lancing device! So I got rid of the device.
BG meters also used to be much smaller. I think I still have this one. I need to find it.
I had one like this. It was about the size of a pen. Super small!
It’s ridiculous how things have gotten bigger instead of smaller. Just like phones. 
The Medisense meter was incredible for the day. Smallest meter ever.
But of course, the way things go in the Diabetes world, companies get bought by other companies and then they disappear.
Medisense was acquired by Abbott Laboratories, and then the cool James Bond spy BG meter went away.
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I think I have one of those somewhere too, at least mine looked identical except maybe it wasn’t “medisense” (I had it with me when I came to the US in 1993, it read in mmol/L of course; much dangerous confusion resulted.)
Some time later I found this (in Walgreens IRC):
It may not look small but the thing on the bottom is a container of test strips:
Everything you need, all little more than the space required by the test strip container. The meter clips on top of the container, and we no longer need a pocket protector to stop the blood stains on our shirts when we forget to remove the test strip!
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Here is my current BG carry.
The red side has the lancet, the green side has the strips. It holds over 25 strips.
I also roughed up the red side with sandpaper, so I can feel which side I am opening. That way I can do it in the dark.
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I think I got the newer version of yours a couple of years ago from my insurance. I really like it except I tend to accidentally set off the lancing device into my thumb quite often.
I’ve added a safety pin to turn off screaming pods.
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Super smart idea!
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Cool. The new version, exactly the same as the old but now in black. Well, better electronics but the same twist on mechanism which just works (probably patented). Want one.
**** it; ordered one:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08DXCV267
I put my money where my mouth is, well, if it’s less than $100. I use a Contour USB ATM and that’s only because it has consistently provided readings that are consistent (not accurate, consistent) with the rest of my kit. It’s inconvenient; I have to order test strips through insurance (or they cost the earth and probably several planets beside). $3.50/strip is a minor inconvenience to my wallet given that I’ve got a CGM. Getting test strips off my order rotor is a major convenience.
My wife is on Livongo. A free (as in “free beer”) alternative offered my our US insurance company (moda). It’s ok but it’s a big piece of kit (it has a built in cellphone, which doesn’t work where we live.)
Over the years I’ve built up an enormous supply of BG test meters; they are free (as in “free beer”) it’s the test strips that are ridiculously overpriced. I guess we could run a competition about who has the most of any single BG test meter (I have a lot of Contour USBs, be warned.) The prize would, of course, be a beer (or a coke, or a cigarette of the bummable variety, but not a coffee; winner choose.)
For the OP, when I was first diagnosed I used something approximately like this to inject my insulin (technically not mine, it was bovine):
IRC the needles I was provided with were 5/8", not that measly 1/2!
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yes I have a kit with glass syringes and stainless steel needles
I also have an old book on the invention of insulin
some old meters of course ones available in canada
would love some of the older. stuff like the buntxen burner used to check glucose in urine or an empty bottle of the strips you dipped i. urine to check urine.
Thinking original meter that were like the size of a book or other things before probably the 90s before technology really took off
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never saw these in canada
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this one I have, I think abbott still uses these
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Have never seen that!! nice it was so discreet
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Clinitabs (this was 1972). Five drops of pissant(sp!), some amount of water IRC and that mighty tablet, all in the bespoke test tube. The thing heated up mightily then pronounced, via colour, an entirely perceptual thing, that I had once again pissed into the wind. Or maybe it was something I ate.
The chemical reaction (the one that requires the heat source) is basically the same. Clinitabs were exothermic (I don’t think they could be sold these days) and quite entertaining. My mother could tell you a story, my father lacked observation 
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I remember my Mom telling me my Grandma would have to boil her needles to reuse them! I don’t have any gear to send you, but this is an interesting post, and I thought I’d share that story.
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