I've not seen a reel to reel in a while. I did once buy one in a jumble sale, but not sure I got it working. I do have a load of 8mm movies from my granddad. I managed to digitise some of those with a gadget I bought. It would have cost a lot to get someone else to do it, but they might get better quality. Good luck with your tapes.
they're amazing bits of engineering really, like most post-war analog devices. And they were meant to be serviced and maintained, not just replaced when they stopped working. I've got a service manual for the one I have, but I won't be doing much more than taking the cover off and blowing dust out of the way :)
My mum used a reel to reel for music at her dance classes before cassettes took over. Those made things simpler, but they could still go wrong and I had a few mangled tapes. That's a format that seems almost redundant, but it's had a bit of a revival lately alongside the vinyl thing.