Ebay mystery

[Sheffield Tony]

Why is it that, if you take an old Stanley 78, possibly missing its fence and depth stop, and lop the front off with an angle grinder, you can then flog it on E-bay as a "special no78 chisel plane" for as much, if not more than, a nice example of a #78 with all the parts ? Does it make a particularly useful tool ?

 

[AndyT]

No. They don't all sell, I think.
The charitable explanation is that these planes were popular for site work so quite a lot would have been genuinely accidentally dropped, broken and then modified by their frugal owners in case they turned out useful.

If the tool abusers are doing this deliberately then they should just stop! (And stop splitting up planes into parts too.)

Then again, eBay is often a good reminder that there really are some very stupid people out there!