Too many to count

[cnotthoff]

I'm working my way through my father's antique tool collection. It includes woodworking, farm, metalworking tools and more. Any ideas on where to find a buyer for the lot rather than do it piece by piece. If there's a buyer for just wooden planes, that would work.

[Yadda]

Not a recommendation, but you could consider an auction.  There are several auction houses that specialize in antique tools.

[Lewill2]

As posted above, if the tools are in good user or collectible condition they could be taken to an auction house or if they are in not so good condition you could try one of the antique tool Face Book groups that allow selling. What part of the country are you in? I might be able to suggest a few people.

[cnotthoff]

We are in San Francisco Bay Area. Would an auction house handle 10's of thousand of tools ranging from Record 45 planes with a complete set of irons to some odd wrenches?

[Lewill2]

I'm not familiar with any auction houses on the West coast that would handle tools but there must be some out there. You may have to separate them into groups, wood working, mechanics and so on. Look around and contact someone and see what they have to say. If you contact a tool collecting group you might find guys interested in looking the group over but if there are 10s of thousands most guys just want to cherry pick the good stuff and leave you with the balance. Most auction houses sell box lots of lesser quality tools all for one price.

[wvtools]

Martin Donnelly takes tool estate consignments from all over.  He sells the better stuff at some of his higher end auctions, and then has a big auction in the summer where he sells of the box and pallet lot stuff.

You can get his information at mjdtools.com


On a side note, he took a large consignment from CA several years ago.  I bought a lot of wrenches from that estate.  A lot of the wrenches had sticky notes on them that had information on the place, date, price, and seller.  If he did not know the name of the seller, he would write a description like "3/20/98, Williams wrench, 2.00, Santa Monica flea market, guy with white hat that drives a blue Ford pickup truck".