Good for you for wanting to put together such an outfit for your daughter. It will be a great heirloom for her to use and hold onto in the future. The earlier French made Mitchell’s were wonderfully made reels - I agree they were generally far superior mechanically to the later Chinese manufactured examples.
The first hollow tubular fiberglass rods were invented in 1945, and the process refined shortly afterwards by Dr Howald. His technique was patented and used by Shakespeare in the late 1940’s on their Wonderods, which became one of the first commercially available synthetic rod offerings. Other companies like Conolon, Montague and Phillipson began to offer hollow glass rods from the late 40’s as well. Though bamboo rods continued to be made in the 50’s and 60’s, hollow glass ruled those decades in sales and use, right up to the early - mid 70’s.
Graphite rods were first brought to the market in 1973 by Fenwick with the HMG (high modulus graphite) range, which remains to this day in their lineup nearly 50 years later, though with many evolutions along the way. Within 2 years several others companies were offering graphite rods as well. By 1982 almost every major manufacturer we see today offered quality graphite rods, and they had almost completely supplanted fiberglass in popularity by that point. (As an interesting aside, higher modulus S glass rods have made a recent small resurgence in popularity over the last few years and it’s not unusual to see some fiberglass rods for sale again in stores, particularly among fly rods).
The Ugly Stick pointed out above is a bullet proof option. I got one in 1979 for a trip to Great Bear Lake and still own it. They are heavier than many of the other graphite offerings of the time, partly due to the solid fiberglass tips, but you could actually touch the tips to the butts on these rods without shattering them. I admit never trying it, but saw it done. These earlier Ugly Sticks were uniformly black or very dark grey and had black neoprene handles with fairly short ( almost too short ) butt sections. Berkley, Daiwa, Fenwick, Shimano etc had a full range of offerings by 1982 in graphite, so you have a range to choose from if you can match the model to the time frame you are after.
Perhaps you could place a WTB advertisement here looking for a spinning rod from that time period, it’s always possible someone has one no longer used or sentimentally valuable and could help you out.
Good luck, it’s cool what you’re looking to do for your daughter.
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