[Old Henry]

Before totally junking your coil why don't you test it? It's pretty easy. Here's how:

When you think the coil is not working, like when it wouldn't start for the parade, first of all check for spark at the plugs either with a timing light or removing a plug and see if there's spark. If there's spark, your coil is working and your problem is something else (for me it's always vapor lock and switching the electric pump on gets me on my way.) If you're not getting spark, that could be from several things including a weak coil, bad points, or condenser. You can field test each as follows:

To isolate the coil and test it to see if it's bad or something else, disconnect the low tension wire from it to the distributor and clip a jumper wire to that terminal. Unplug the high tension wire from the coil and replace it with a short spark plug wire kept in the trunk for this test. Turn on the ignition and test for voltage at the battery side of the coil. If there, tap the other end of the jumper wire on a head bolt while holding the end of the spark plug wire near a head bolt to see if it sparks. Tapping the jumper wire duplicates the action of the points and should create a spark at the end of the spark plug wire. My wager would be that your coil is OK. I've impulsively replaced too many coils that never fixed my problems that always turned out to be something else.

If the coil is OK you can test the condenser with the multimeter carried in the trunk for field tests. If your meter will test capacitance remove the wire form the condenser to the distributor and put one test lead on that wire and the other on the condenser body (don't even have to remove the condenser if you don't want to). It should show .20-.30 mfds. If your meter doesn't test capacitance you can use the resistance test that should show ohms climbing rapidly if the condenser is working.

It's not very likely that you won't get spark if both the coil and condenser are working. The only thing left would be spark plugs or wires but they would not all fail at the same time. Even if some were bad the engine would still start. If the car won't start with both of those working it's a gas problem and most likely vapor lock that should be solved immediately by switching your electric pump on.

My 2 cents.