Bought my house around 2000 and it had a GE Combination Fridge from the mid 1960's. Looks like this one [1] but in turquoise. Still going 20 years later and all I have done is clean the lint off the cooling fins a few times a year. My Kill-A-Watt says it is about as efficient as a modern fridge.

I think it is just very hard to impossible to judge the quality of an appliance just by looking at it. All external signals a seriously gamed by manufacturers. Even consumer reports does not do a total breakdown by electrical and mechanical engineers to let you know how good something is. Then, at most, 1% of people would care enough to read a quality guide. Price is easy to look at and compare.

Want to by a copper tank water heater that will last a century for your home. Good luck. I've got one from the 50's but I had to know to replace the thermocouple when that breaks once a decade and not just throw it out when it stops working.

[1]https://retrorenovation.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/60s-G...

Fridges also used to use more efficient coolant, which was outlawed. So newer fridges are typically worse, especially in that they run almost all the time and produce a more annoying sound.

Personally I use an ammonia absorption fridge, the kind of thing you usually only see in hotel minis and camping vans, because of the noise.

Do you know of any source for a full size one that could run on natural gas? Like you said, looks like they are all quite a bit smaller (or huge industrial systems). I do dislike the noise of refrigerators and if my current one fails I would like to try a gas powered replacement. Also, natural gas in California is way cheaper per unit of energy than electricity (thanks to Enron and other factors). A gas frig could be cheaper to run than electric here.

I got one from Dometic. I don't think they run on natural gas though, just propane.

https://www.dometic.com/en-us/us/products/food-and-beverage/...

which, by the way, works out to $5.2k https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US$494.90+(1950+US+dol.... I'm assuming the amounts listed on that page are in 1950s dollars because they have nice round endings like .95.

That's a very large difference. Interesting.