Old Record, Stanley, Marples ...

[Phil Pascoe]

I was chatting to the tool guy at the market on the weekend and I commented on the lack of planes. A year ot two ago he always had fifteen or twenty decent planes, anything from 3s to 7s, and now there is not one good one there. He told me they're just not getting them any more and the odd one they see at the car boots is too expensive to buy to resell - so maybe the time has come to bite the bullet and snap them up if you see them at an anything like reasonable price.

 

[Nigel Burden]

The prices on eBay are often exorbitant. So the Stanley Baily no4 that I picked up three years ago for £6 was a bargain. I haven't bought anything off the bay for some time now. I bought a curved sole woodie in good condition for £8 at the Oak Fair last year, and there was one seller selling old chisels in good condition for £5 each. Haven't tried the markets for a while, but I'll have a look at Bridport Market on Saturday.

Nigel.

 

[D_W]

There's no fewer planes moving around, they just go directly to ebay - and for good reason. They bring more there and people selling them don't get stuck giving them to dealers for pennies.

The second a smart phone app became available to show sellers the recent sales prices for a given item, it was all over for on the ground stockists. I see this as an improvement, as the general M.O. around here was for dealers to really get most of the on the ground planes and then put them in stores to see them turn over once every three years. The seller got little, the buyer paid a lot on anything with any notoriety.

Keep your eye on actual sales prices on ebay. For every 20 items listed, only one is actually intended to sell relatively quickly. The actual sale price will often be half of the average listed price, sometimes half of the listed price of anything, which means you just have to get ebay to send you links of any new listings within given parameters. The second ebay stopped charging listing fees, the price of everything listed went up, but the price of items sold changed little. The size of the selling items vs. the listed has continued to shrink as a percentage - it must be good for ebay to allow that, because ebay doesn't do things that are good for sellers or good for buyers. They do things that are good for ebay.

 

[mynamehere]

I was looking for a router plane, thought that a bid of £30,- could get me somewhere with this "no name" example:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Unmarked-Rou ... EBIDX%3AIT

I didn't expect to be off by a factor of 12....

Cheers!

Ferenc

 

[Phil Pascoe]

There were about ten bidders and the winner was a single bid. People obviously knew what it was.

 

[mynamehere]

Even if people knew what is was, what do they do with it?
Put it on a mantle piece?
Hope it will be worth twice as much next year?

I kind a doubt that it will ever see a splinter of wood....

Cheers!

Ferenc

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Oh, I dare say it will be carefully polished and put away, never to see the light of day again.

 

[AndyT]

The most likely reason why the price of that router went so high is that it's been repeatedly praised and shown off by Paul Sellers.
Unless the buyer thinks they can resell it for even more, I think it will have been bought by someone who does want to get into hand tool woodworking. I suggest that, for some people, used to more expensive hobbies such as sailing, golf or photography, old woodwork tools don't look expensive, even at these surprising extremes.

PS. I think it's a Tyzack.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Yes, there is a Tyzack on the bottom left of that ebay page.

 

[AndyT]

Yes, there is a Tyzack on the bottom left of that ebay page.

Ah yes, I've found it now.
In my defence, m'lud, I was only looking at the caption and the pictures, on a phone.

 

[Chris152]

A very kind gentleman from deepest Cornwall acquired and sent me this beauty about 18 months back at a snip of a price:

He obviously didn't realise what it'd be worth one day!

 

[Phil Pascoe]

:lol: they don't come at that price any more.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

I suppose it's down to the laws of supply and demand. The interweb auction sites have made it easier for worldwide buyers to look to the UK (which is, according to some US forums at least, waist deep in vintage tools), and the supply has to drop off a bit eventually - it's a finite resource, after all.

Bad news if you want fine vintage tools at bargain basement prices, good news if you're supplying decent quality new tools. Good that more people seem to be interested in trying their hand at a wood-related skill (or acquiring the tools, anyway!), not so good that the price of a kit of tools to do so is going up a bit.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I think the tutors at the local college must have told their students to watch Paul Sellers - at the market they would sell several planes in a morning at the beginning of the autumn term. They were obviously advised not to buy new.

 

[scooby]

Its all a bit depressing, I had some hand tools stolen so I'm on the lookout for replacements (planes mainly). I hate buying anything on ebay at the best of times but the price of bench planes and router planes has gone mental there.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Its all a bit depressing, I had some hand tools stolen so I'm on the lookout for replacements (planes mainly). I hate buying anything on ebay at the best of times but the price of bench planes and router planes has gone mental there.

Sorry to hear about having tools stolen; it's a really sickening feeling. Not nice at all.

It does raise a point, though - if the price realised by sale of second hand tools is rising, it makes them more attractive to the sort of scumbag that engages in crime. A wake-up call to look at workshop security and other measures to deter or foil scumbags.

 

[Andy Kev.]

Scarcity combined with rising prices is clearly not a nice thing if you are looking to buy a plane.

On the other hand, does not increasing scarcity imply that ever more people are turning to woodworking with hand tools? If that is the case, then we can probably look at it positively as the future for the craft might be assured.

 

[scooby]

Its all a bit depressing, I had some hand tools stolen so I'm on the lookout for replacements (planes mainly). I hate buying anything on ebay at the best of times but the price of bench planes and router planes has gone mental there.

Sorry to hear about having tools stolen; it's a really sickening feeling. Not nice at all.

It does raise a point, though - if the price realised by sale of second hand tools is rising, it makes them more attractive to the sort of scumbag that engages in crime. A wake-up call to look at workshop security and other measures to deter or foil scumbags.

Thanks. Im usually super careful with tools, so I'm a bit angry with myself. It was only a few hand tools, mainly record and stanley planes. I think what hurts the most is I'd (like we all have) invested quite a bit of time and effort to get them working nice.
I'll have a look around at online retailers for second hand tools, I'd rather pay a premium than resort to ebay.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

https://www.tooltique.co.uk/antique/old-tool-shop/
have some decent stuff, Ray Iles is another.

 

[DannyEssex]

A few years ago when I started collecting my tool set, I mainly went to boot sales as the prices was very cheap. Very rarely did I see a plane for more than a fiver, and chisels was around 50 pence to a pound each. I was very fortunate as I was able to build up my tool set quickly for a small price. Nowadays, I see young hipster looking guys buying up all the tools, over polishing them to make them look pretty and shiny and sell them for an extortionate price, usually at the same boot sale.