Valuing a 19th century toolbox & tools

Re: Valuing a 19th century toolbox & tools

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>Depending on what's there and how it looks, offer him $300 and bring it home. :)

Pam

The temptation is there,

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>but I would want to be fair to him, and I have a feeling I can't afford what would be fair - and he needs the money.

Thread Hijack

David MiIler from Iowa

>Pam -

I have been in your fair city for a couple days and I have to say that rust hunting is very poor. Do you think it is because the population was so much less back in the day?

David

Re: Thread Hijack

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>I think Texas is not a good old tool market. However, there are a few flea markets and auctions here and there that I haven't attended. There's a big flea every weekend northeast of town that's supposed to be great.

Pam

Re: Valuing a 19th century toolbox & tools

paul womack

> that appears to be 19th century, since the planes are all woodies.

I don't know about the US, but in the UK a full range of woodies was still available in the fifties, so dating a chest to the 19th C purely on that basis may not be justified.

BugBear

Re: The temptation is there,

Moses Yoder in White Pigeon, MI

>It is very rare for these to have much value. They have usually been stored in a basement so the tools are all rusty and there normally are not any tools in the box that are worth more than $5. A complete 19th century tool box sounds very romantic but the reality is there is not much of a market for them. This case may be different. At a garage sale this year I saw a box with some tools in it and asked about it a little bit. I was of course given the story of how the tools were his great-grandfathers tools and they must have been from the 1700's because he was that old. He was asking $500 for the box. It had one millers falls drill in it that I would have paid $5-$10 for, a beat up woodie plane that wasn't worth $5 and some misc. hand saws and drills. As a lot the box was worth maybe $75. If you open the box and it looks similar to the Studley tool chest, well that is a different matter.

Re: Valuing a 19th century toolbox & tools

Todd Hughes

>Of course hard to answear this question specificaly because we don't know what is in the box and what the it is like. I'm going to approach it like it is an avarage tool chest , not a fancy tool chest full of piano making tools and not a nailed together one with rusty pipe wrenches.

Even in the old tool hell I live in I see alot of nice old tool chests like this and a good many of them are still full of thier tools. I'm talking large dovetailed chests with sliding trays etc. The tools in them maybe 10 - 25 wood planes , saws, chisels, etc. Of course you see ones with later metal planes too. I have bought entire filled tool chests like this befor but I really try not to because I don't like to sell tool chests and have more then I need so I normaly pick out the tools I want and just buy them.

I think if you have an ordinary filled chest the best way by far to sell it is by breaking it up. You will get a higher price because you will have more people interested in what you are selling then just the small market of people looking for a full tool chest.Yes more trouble for you but in the end worth it I would think.

...Most of the nice empty tool chests I see sell for between $50 -$150. I have seen them go as low as $5 and as high as $250 for a really nice one with inlays etc. and this one still had the tools in it that I hadn't pulled out. Sure I have seen them priced much higher but don't know if they get sold. I bought a great pattern makers one befor full of his tools for $200 too.

I have people ask me about what thier wooden planes are worth and of course you can't tell them with out seeing them. Most times when I do see them they ain't worth much but then I did have a friend show me a cheap tool chest of sorry looking planes he bought that had a rare patented wooden plane in it that I sold for him for about $800. He was lucky because the rest was firewood and he was a slowhead to pay the $200 for them.

A rule of thumb I have is I don't like to pay more then $10 for a wooden molding plane and I can buy lots at that price if I want to. When you resell [I sell on the ebay] there are lots of nice condition molding planes that you have a hard time getting $15-$20 for. You can do very well with wide complex profiles and some other types but these ain't the avarage plane that I see.Wooden jointers and smoothers etc. are probaly not worth much or any more. I try not to sell these anyways. Tongue and Groove planes can be worth a bit, maybe even $50-$75. Same for plow planes though I don't normaly sell many because is hard to get them cheap since they tend to look "expensive" and go high at auctions and flea markets often more then what they are "worth".

Unless a mint set or in original box always better to sell sets of chisels by the piece.

In my opinon the best place to sell stuff like this is on the ebay, in most cases you will get the very best prices compared to selling it any place else. Less chance of selling somthing good to cheap too if you don't know what you have. Fairly easy to sell there and most tools like this are easy to ship too. Guess even not all that hard to ship a tool chest though I wouldn't go to the trouble myself [got to many small stuff to sell].....Todd

Re: The temptation is there,

Warren in Lancaster, PA

>I had similar thoughts, Moses. It would be really exciting (and valuable) if you found a chest that had sat unopened for 150 or 250 years because its owner suddenly died or something. It would be even better if there was a history of when it was used and the ages of the tools matched that history. Much more likely is that some guy collected old tools from flea markets or auctions and one day bought an old chest to store them in. I think some dealers would put their junk tools in a chest like this just to get rid of them.

Moses, did you receive my e-mail?

HC Sakman

>

Chico check your email

Dominic Greco in Richboro PA

>I've been trying to get through to you for a couple days now.

Later,

Dominic