Fancy News - Newly Acquired Vintage Image Capture Device

It is certainly curious and more than funny to see how things can sometimes look like junk until you really give them a cold hard look.
Recently, we came across an old camera at a tag sale that I finally bought for a couple of dollars for the hell of it. Initially, I found it so unattractive and almost cheasy-looking (it sports an absolutely absurd atomic image) that I didn't let myself really focus on it too closely, having at first glance written it off as a crummy slr wannabe from like 1960's Korea or Blaabistan or somewhere equally dreary. I was almost too repulsed to touch it. It did seem clean tho', and I thought some kid might love to have it for a first camera to either use, or to finish ruining completely while trying to learn how to use it. Well, it also dawned on me to try auctioning it off online or something since it was so clean and it had it's case and all - someone might love it to complement their Trabant kit or Mao suit - but to research it I had to pick it up and look at it. The first thing I did was to look at the lense for info, and my eyes popped, for such an oddball it had a 1:1.7 lens which I know means a better grade than what I ever had on an slr, so I looked it up in real ernest now, and found that it is a commonly available, old-but-excellent range finder type camera, who would have known?
It turns out that this machine is a fourth generation (circa 1973), G series, Yashica 35mm Rangefinder Electro 35, GSN, and it has quite a following out there, loads of stuff about it on the net.
This one is in it's original banged-up case but it is very clean and shows little wear and no damage that I can see beyond somebodies clumsy efforts to remove a ring from the lense assembly, (scratching the hell out of the black ring with the lens info imprinted on it in the process). They were probably trying to get in to remove some offensive flakes of debris visible under the first layer of glass inside the actual lens assembly, and without success since the cruft is still there to tell the story. The outside face of the lens seems clean and unscathed, so I have hopes for it's ability to deliver knock-out pics even with the floaters inside. Luckily, while the last custodial guardian of this edsel with killer glass not only failed to open the lens, he did remove the old battery, so that the battery compartment is clean. I am in the process of cobbling together the recommended Rube Goldberg styled battery arrangement to replace the out-of-production mercury-based battery that would have originally powered the simple little electromagnet-based computer thing that makes this such a handy instrument of expression and all-round image capture device.
I can't wait to try it out with some real film this Summer, I am reluctant to take the new dslr so this electro might do nicely (even with the odd bits of dander under the lens).