Best way to handle a massive vintage appliance discovery?

I went thru almost the same thing with a 1948 Westinghouse fridge I pulled out of my late aunt's porch enclosure. Mine looked fine on the outside, but the insulation in those old cabinets can be a mess, and mine had that chalky stuff around the door gasket area that I did not want to guess about. I paid a local abatement outfit to come take a look before I touched anything, and the sample came back positive. That ended the restoration idea for me. The unit itself probably ran fine, the motor was still strong, but the cost of proper removal plus rewiring an ancient compressor setup was way past what a working vintage fridge is worth to most people. If yours is in a space that already has sheeting up, I would assume the worst until someone qualified says otherwise. New fridge, keep a photo of the old one, and move on with the reno.

I'd be leaning the other way on this one. My wife and I inherited a late 40s Kelvinator from her grandparents' farmhouse about six years ago, and we went down the same road of wondering whether to restore it. What killed the idea for us was the running cost. Those old compressors draw way more power than anything sold today, and after I looked at our electric bill over a summer, the romance faded fast.

We ended up selling it as-is to a guy who collects them, for less than a tank of gas money, and he was thrilled. Turns out there's a whole crowd of hobbyists who genuinely want these things even when they're rough, because they strip them down in thier own garages as a weekend passion. That's a very different situation from you paying out of pocket for testing and repairs on a timeline.

If the room needs a full modernization anyway, I'd treat the fridge as clutter in the way of the project rather than a project itself. Photograph it, list it locally for free or cheap to a collector, and let the vintage bug absorb the risk. The only version where I'd keep it is if you personally love the look and have no deadline, because that's the one case where the headaches don't cost you anything but time.

Agreeing with the guy who got the positive test back, walking away is usually the right call. My own experience: I bought a 50s GE off a guy on classifieds thinking I'd clean it up and sell it. Test came back clean, so I dodged the insulation problem, but then I hit the other wall. The old seal on the door was shot, the gasket had to be custom ordered, and when I finally gave up and tried to haul it to the county dump they wanted paperwork proving the refrigerant had been recovered before they'd take it. Ended up paying a hauler forty bucks just to make it disappear. Even the clean ones can eat your weekend and your wallet.

One thing I'd add from my own reno: don't just focus on the fridge itself. We found an old chest freezer in a basement corner during a gut job and the sheeting in that room turned out to be there beacuse of the floor tiles and pipe wrap, not the appliance. Once the testers showed up it snowballed into a way bigger scope than we planned for. So before you even decide on the unit, get the room looked at. It might explain why that stuff was hung up in the first place, and it changes your whole budget picture.