19c cabinet makers tools, keep or sell?

[cabinotgrtgrtgrnson]

Hi all, I'm new to this site and I have been looking into my great great grandfather's on both my mother's side ( only one mother and both of her grandfather's was cabinet makers) and her dad was.
Just to give you a bit of an idea of the age between us all. My mother is 88 and my grandfather was in the first world war and my mum can only remember her granddad on one side and said that he was old then, and the other had died before she was born.
So that is around 1860/70, the tools have been stamped with his name, A A Jones and they also have the previous owner that stamped, J Hardy , I'm not sure if he was his grandfather of the mothers side.
The wood planes are, Griffith Norwich and Moseley London (just a few I've looked at)
The big chisels are Groves and son.
The normal size chisels are W Marples hibbernear , ward's , solby and the other top brands I've looked up.
The auger bits are R Jennings patent and a few other special sized ones.
Loads of different brands of hand cut files.
A few scrapers Marples and a very old looking one.
Sharpening stones.
A few other things I have yet to find out more about.
About 20 small chisels with screwdriver type Handel's.
Another 20 T handle auger bits.
And another load of the really old style spoon and V shape auger bits.
Chapman brace and a few saws and a Marples saw set tool. And more.
My brother has made a use of the elaborate planes.
But a bit of a guess at how many planes are left around 40.
I don't want them to be left in the shed and getting ruined. They are all the best and most likely still the best that you can get. Some probably museum pieces.
So what I'm trying to find out is do you think it should all stay together and have you got any advice on how to go about doing this ?
This is a genuine question.
Thanks for your time

 

[AndyT]

They sound like good tools.
The best thing is to keep them in a cool dry place (not a shed!) to prevent rust / rot etc ruining them. Ideally, someone in the family would want them as a group, to use them. Realistically that's unlikely.

You won't find any museum that would accept them as a donation. Sad fact, but museums are in financial peril.

If selling them, the best financial return is from selling them as individual pieces, privately or on eBay. Trouble is, that takes knowledge and work. If you sell them in bulk to a dealer, they will pay you a low price then earn their profit by putting in the work.

There are a few dozen good used tool dealers around. There are also two specialist auction houses who would take them off your hands with the minimum amount of work from yourself. One of them, David Stanley, operates near you.

There's a useful note on disposal of tool collections on the TATHS website. They also have a list of dealers. More here

http://taths.org.uk/tools-trades/notes-on-tools

 

[toolsntat]

As a collector of this sort of stuff I can say that it will be very hard to sell them and expect them to stay together.
You have to be of a certain breed of collector to take these as a whole and say you will keep them as such, I know as I have done this a few times myself but this means you need space to keep them as such and if you like old tools that much, you have to be very fortunate to have enough storage room.
You describe a lot of nice tools but in collecting circles it is not uncommon to have these readily available from all sorts of sources.
So is it a sentimental fulfillment or a case of getting best value from them for your family.
Andy has outlined some options above but as someone with a sentimental toe in this collecting malarkey I would love to see it all put back together as a full kit and kept within the family.
If being dispersed finding passionate hand tool users like some of those on this forum would be the just deserves in memory of the tradesmen who used them before. Mind you achieving that as a new member to this forum is easier said than done.
Would I like to have the chance to buy it? Of course I would but as outlined above my space is at a premium and I would do everything to convince you to keep it together because from your post you have shown a love and respect to your relatives in trying to save them.
Sorry about the ramblings and hope you understand what I'm trying to say.
By the way a significant family connection is often lost in the dispersal of such tools and that is the original name stamps that were used to mark the tools and you may want to hang on to them if they are there.
In a nutshell, keep em :wink:
Cheers
Andy

 

[cabinotgrtgrtgrnson]

Hi Andy
Thanks for your reply. I appreciate your comments, the family name is no longer connected with the tools. Personally I would have thought that the collection of tools used by a cabinet maker and passed down from maker to maker would have far more meaning than a single item with a name on? .
I see that you are from Leicester and you are more than welcome to come and have a look. I'm in Kirby.
All I ask is that you remember that I have been looking into the values of them and I will respect your knollage so I hope you will do the same.
Thanks again for your help and advice

 

[toolsntat]

Yes it would be great to meet and look.
Not sure you can send me a message back but have forwarded you a number.

Thanks
Andy

 

[AndyT]

That's a good plan. Andy has a huge collection of tools, detailed knowledge of the market and good connections.
He'll give you informed and honest advice.

 

[Boringgeoff]

If your mother is 88 you are possibly in your 60's, still working? What are your plans for when you retire? When I retired 10 years ago the last thing I would have expected was that I would start collecting, and learning to use, braces and brace tools.
I grew up in a house with our Grandmother who was born in 1876 and as children she told us stories of her childhood. So that date,1876, is the starting point of my memories and believe me it's not really all that long ago. If I pick up a tool that was made in 1886 I'll think to myself "Grandma was 10 when this tool was made". I have a lot of tools with previous owners names on and often wonder who or where he/she was. One brace and roll of bits I bought from a fellow told me it was his fathers who worked as a telephone linesman in the 1950's and 60's. I asked him to give me a potted history of his Dad and I've still got this provenance.
I'd dearly love to have in my possession tools that belonged to my forbears but sadly nothing.
I'm for keeping them.
Cheers,
Geoff.

 

[toolsntat]

Well, how did you get on ??

 

[D_W]

Another vote for selling them individually. They'll be worth far more that way than as a group. The only sale you'll get for them as a group would be someone looking to get the group cheaply so they could split them up and resell them.

 

[AndyT]

If you decide to eBay them yourself you may find you don't do very well, not having a crowd of tool-buying followers and an established reputation.

For best results take it slowly. List tools singly. Take plenty of well-lit, clear photographs. Make sure your descriptions are factual and accurate. Keep your starting prices low. Make sure that you include the USA as a country you will sell to.

 

[D_W]

Ditto to all of the things Andy says. Especially selling in the US, too. Just open up Ebay's global shipping option and let them do the work for you unless you've really got some way that you think is a lot better. On this side of the ocean, we are used to waiting an extra week or more for stuff coming from the UK.

There are quite a lot of things that don't sell for much over there that sell quite well over here, like regular old tang chisels, Marples blue chips (it's beyond me why, but I just saw a set of them sell for over $100, and they were the later sheffield made ones that are cut rather fat on the lands), unusual sharpening stones like charns, idwal's, etc. Oh, and good condition infills or wooden planes of any type. They exist over there in droves, but the move for modernism that occurred here in the early 1900s through about the 1980s had us casting off a lot of our old tools here, or leaving them in an area to rust away.

I've had a fair number of Russian purchases from the US, too. (good) pocket knives and arkansas stones always attract russian interest when I list them.

 

[Flartybarty]

If the planes are by the same maker and have the same users stamps, I'd try to keep them together. Particularly if there are several sizes of one type, e.g. a full set of beads or a half set of hollows & rounds. such sets are always worth more than individually. I recently bought two moulding planes (No. 5 and 7 OG & bead) which were being sold separately, but I noticed they were both by Griffiths and both had the same users name. So I bought them. I'd love to find the rest of the set but that's as likely as Labour winning the next GE.

 

[RogerP]

Ditto to all of the things Andy says. Especially selling in the US, too. Just open up Ebay's global shipping option and let them do the work for you unless you've really got some way that you think is a lot better. On this side of the ocean, we are used to waiting an extra week or more for stuff coming from the UK.
................

For items up to 2 kilos I always send to the US by Royal Mail's tracked and signed for service. Delivery is almost always 5 days but can be 7 at worst. I see no advantage using eBay's GSP.

 

[D_W]

Ditto to all of the things Andy says. Especially selling in the US, too. Just open up Ebay's global shipping option and let them do the work for you unless you've really got some way that you think is a lot better. On this side of the ocean, we are used to waiting an extra week or more for stuff coming from the UK.
................

For items up to 2 kilos I always send to the US by Royal Mail's tracked and signed for service. Delivery is almost always 5 days but can be 7 at worst. I see no advantage using eBay's GSP.

Yes, there really is no advantage to the gsp on small things. They use the cheapest and slowest shipping possible once an item gets over here.

It does open up items for us that shippers won't ship internationally, though.