The refrigerator in our kitchen is the Hotpoint my parents bought when I was born. It's been running continuously for well over 60 years. I've painted it and replaced the door gaskets a few times over the years, and it runs great.

If you wanted to keep it, you could always have it repaired. Retro appliances are quite popular now, so a running fridge is worth a lot more than a broken one.

afarmgal - my parents had an old fridge in the basement - single door with a small freezer. It was still running after over 60 years.
That being said - side by side fridges are probably not popular on the resale market.
Also, the newer fridges are much more energy efficient and keep food so much better.
Your local electric company might give you a few dollars for it as a credit on your electric bill (and take it away for free)
You can try to have it fixed but might cost more than you think.
Good luck

It's junk. Be happy if you can get it hauled off for free.

I just talked with the appliance repairman who informed me that my new refrigerator was junk and would be dead w/in 10 years. He said he has a lot of customers with running refrigerators in their basements and garages from the 60s and 70s, in avocado green and harvest gold, likely to go on forever.

Refrigerators don't "run out" of Freon. Freon (which by the way is a trademarked brand name of the Dupont Company but has fallen into generic use) doesn't wear out or get used up. The cooling system (compressor, evaporator, and condensor) is sealed and nothing leaks out unless there's a leak.

Could also be that some other component has failed.

does it even have freon ?

I thought that was the period when the ice truck still brought you blocks of ice to cool the cabinet ???

..............just kidding.

but you cannot purchase the type freon that unit takes anymore, so repair is pretty much impossible now.

You can buy R-12 pretty easily, actually. I added some to a car recently. Same for R-22.