Customer Reviews

Antique Trader Tools Price Guide

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

We like this tool price guide book, but we just wish it was set up so you could look up tools by their maker rather than by just what they are. If you wanted to look up a certain Stanley Plane you would have to go to the planes section and read each description to find a Stanley plane. The index does not go by the maker of the tool, it just goes by what type of tool you are looking up. Still a useful price guide with beautiful photos.

I purchased this book for my boyfriends birthday. He is very interested in old tools, and old things in general. He Loves it. He takes it out to the machine shed and compares tools, or just glances at the pages in the evenings. The two largest sections are those on plumb bobs and planes.

This is an excellent book for collectors and just folks who like tools. Like the others mentioned I only wish it was indexed or set up so that a person could look up a specific tool. It is still the best I have seen and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading about tools and looking at the excellent photos.
It does not tell you much about the history or application of the tools. There are other books that do this. This author/editor has written a book that is for those of us who already know something about tools.

This book is a huge help in identifying and valuing tools at estate sales, auctions and flea markets. The book has hundreds of big color photos and the sections on condition grading and collecting Stanley tools are essential information that every collector should have. Wish I had known this information earlier. Who knew there were so many different types of planes? Or that some could be worth tens of thousands of dollars? There's no telling how many tools I passed up because I didn't know what they were or what they were worth. Just one informed purchase at a garage sale could pay for this book ten times over.

The third updated edition of Antique Trader Tools Price Guide is a fine survey blending some 700 color photos with actual prices received at auctions with over 2,000 listings of tools ranging from braces and saws to levels, gauges, and more. Details on market trends, investing, and building a collection make this a key collector's choice.

We collect ancient and antique tools and neither of us can believe these prices. It's all about market and location however. Great book for library as comparison and guide.

Excellent photos and descriptions of a huge range of joiners tools and equipment - really interesting.

I bought it sight unseen and would rather have spent the money on a box of rusty, broken wrenches. The pictures are beautiful, but layout is hapless and content is absent. The author uses various auction results (sometimes repeating himself) of mostly high priced and rare items without any analysis as to why the items sold for those prices. More importantly, for the beginner, it is never explained why the plane they found at a yard sale is only worth $10 when a plane described in this book by the same maker sold for $600. Very disappointing. Better to buy the prices realized catalogs from the national tool auctioneers. Unusable as a reference book. But well photographed.

I bought this book for a great reference to tools that I see in antiques stores. It's perfect. Very descriptive and the correct names for each tool.

I would have rather spent more money and recieved a more thorough reference book that covers more tools in more detail. The guide is nice and the pictures are high quality, it just seems to be short on content.