Buying hand tools on an online auction site

Here are a few tips and suggestions for a more successful experience buying usable vintage hand tools on online auction services.

Note that this article was originally written to cover a certain famous online auction service. I have since found buying through them to be difficult and cancelled my account as well as my account with an online payment service associated with them. I have moved on, and suggest you think seriously about doing the same until things turn around. In the meantime, you might poke around the classified forum section at www.sawmillcreek.org

1. Only buy items that are adequately pictured and described. You don't necessarily pay a premium price for items that are thoroughly and effectively displayed and you greatly reduce your risk due to defects that you couldn't see.

2. For little or no apparent reason, auction prices vary wildly. Sometimes very similar tools (from the perspective of those of us looking for quality usable tools) will vary by a factor of four or greater. For instance, a hand brace can vary from $20 to over $100 for two similar models for no reason or perhaps because one carries a certain name even though it is identical to another lesser-known brand. Have fun and have patience. Don't get attached to a particular tool.

3. Your list of items you were outbid on should be much longer than the list of items you win. Perhaps 80-90% of the tools that are sold are overpriced for your purposes.

4. Inspect items thoroughly. Many of the items sold are incomplete, missing essential parts, broken, worn out, chipped, cracked, and otherwise compromised. Good items are often sold for about the same price as damaged stuff. Unless you are running a vintage tool repair shop, wait for the good stuff.

5. The search engine is your friend. When you come across an unknown brand or a tool whose heritage or identity are in doubt, look it up. Someone, somewhere has probably written an article about just that tool.

6. Cheaper tools and disposable tools are usually better bought new. Things like chisels, spokeshaves, sharpening stones, routers, files, screwdrivers, awls, knives and suchlike are often in poor condition, improperly handled or stored, difficult to correctly identify, damaged, missing parts, suffering from neglect and abuse and otherwise compromised. If you have lots of patience, are really lucky, or can combine shipping costs of multiple items, you might still be able to get a good deal on some of those things. Also, some tools like sharpening stones, have modern versions that are significantly better than the vintage versions.

7. There is a risk factor in buying used tools on online auctions. Some of the things you buy will almost certainly require repairs, reconditioning, new parts, excessive filing or dressing or sharpening, or otherwise be a general pain or worse, be useless or cost money to fix. Factor this into the price you are willing to pay. If you are really careful about what you buy, and do careful research, you might think about pegging this risk factor at about 25-35% of the value of the tool. In other words, for every $100 you spend, figure that you will have to spend $25-35 repairing or replacing useless items. For people who don't do proper research, and for certain kinds of tools, I would suggest that this might run much higher. In addition, a lot of things you buy will undoubtedly require a serious investment of time to bring into proper working order.

8. Use a sniping service if one is available for your online auction of choice. This does three things. First of all, it will help prevent you from overpaying by forcing you to decide on a price and not giving you a chance to change it ofter you actually make the bid (you can change it up until just before the auction ends when you bid is entered). Also, it helps prevent others from getting "auction fever" as they watch the price go up and are tempted to enter higher bids to win. Finally, this may be more subtle, but a sniping service helps you avoid the marketplace's marketing schemes. By using an alternate interface for part of the transaction, you aren't constantly bombarded with their marketing tactics.

9. Do your research. Know what you are buying. You should be able to look at the item you are buying and have a pretty good idea if it is a quality tool and if all of the parts are present.

10. You should know what you are looking for before you go shopping. You should not just be shopping for a hand plane. You should be shopping for a #4 smoother or a #5 Jack or whatever.

11. Fortunately for us, the needs of collectors and users are generally different. Collectors are usually looking for rare stuff. Users are generally looking for the more common stuff that everybody used. If you are looking for specialty items that are hot collector items, you may just want to buy new ones.