I can definitely appreciate those feelings. I buy and use old cameras for many reasons, chief among them being the fact that they actually take amazing photographs even today. But I also will spend time in the evening looking at them and wondering what they may have seen.
In some cases, such as my 1938 Agfa Jsolette 85mm/4.5, I strongly suspect it spent a lot of its past has been spent in its box or in a drawer somewhere. It is just too pristine to have taken very many photographs. Maybe a few on Christmas or other holidays. I like to imagine it belonged to someone like my grandmother who used it carefully to document the important events of her families history.
Other times I pick up my 1956 Leica M3 and turn it in my hands, looking at the scars of rough use displayed everywhere. The strap lugs are worn halfway through from continual carry. Obviously this particular camera has not spent much of its time waiting on someone to put it to work. Any box it spent time in would almost surely been a shipping box traveling to and from Leica for occasional adjustment and service. Or more likely there was a trusted local technician nearby who knew how to finely tune this camera for his customer. I say that because for all its scratches, bruises and scars, it still works as smoothly as a fine watch. The old Elmar 50/2.8 that came along with it seems equally worn on the surface but it still sees with a clear eye. I sometimes dream of it being carried without much drama from place to place by the photographer/writer/printer/editor/owner/jack-of-all-trades of a small town newspaper. Someone who certainly appreciated what this camera was capable of and trusted it to do what was needed, but far too busy to be concerned with the niceties of proper storage. Storage was the hook on the hat rack underneath the owner's jacket. This was a valued tool of his (or her) trade. No more no less.
And then I head out the door myself with these cameras and continue to use them for what their designers envisioned, to make photographs.
Isn't the imagination a grand thing??