I look at boxes of tools at estate sales like a lottery ticket.

For $5 I get a box of tools, worth at least $1 for scrap and at least $4 worth of fun.

Often I do better.

Once in a while I hit a jackpot.

But here is an odd thing:

EVERY box of tools, even the ones with rusty Chinese sockets and a broken ratchet, has ONE good tool in it.

usually it's a better socket , that didn't come with the Chinese set.

sometimes it's a Plomb, or Hebrand DOE wrench.

But I can only remember one or two boxes that didn't have one 'orphan' in it

I always wonder why..

One snap-on socket would have cost more than the whole pile of K-Mart junk.

I guess maybe it was "found".

Maybe under the hood  of car, left by the previous mechanic.

Maybe found along the road.

Maybe it followed someone home from work.

Anyone else had this experience?

or a theory?

Skip

It came from a flea market when a fellow bought a whole box of tools and only got one Snap-On socket....

It is the  innate perversity of inanimate objects.

Hey, that's how God does most things. Coal you can find in lots of places. Diamonds, not so much. Maybe He does tools the same way?

If people pick up tools as they come across them, just like the bins of sockets at flea markets, every once in a while they're bound to  pick up a good one.  Most will be, these days, Taiwan made, or India, or some other outsourced place.   Accumulators, not collectors. 

in the old gold rush days it was call3ed salting . the people who bring the box to the sale throw the good piece in .   LOL  bob w.

I had never heard of Bob's term "Salting", but I like it! A couple of weeks ago, I stopped at a yard sale, that looked like Pop just had died, and they were cleaning out his garage. So many tools, for so cheap, that I was passing on them because I did not want to take my hoarding to the next level. I saw 2 large USPS Flat Rate boxes of sockets, with a price of 5 for a dollar. I made a deal, and bought both boxes for 30 bucks total. After I got them all cleaned and sorted, I found I had one full box of goodies, and one full box of junk. I think they did a good job of mixing the two together, to make them both desirable looking ! Lol

PS. Several 1 inch drive proto impact sockets more than paid for the the group!

Wayne

I think the "Salting" theory is what most Auctioneers do with their box lots to get rid of the junk when they auction off an estate.

Quote from: Lewill2 on August 06, 2011, 09:14:27 AM
I think the "Salting" theory is what most Auctioneers do with their box lots to get rid of the junk when they auction off an estate.

I agree completely. I've seen that so many times at auctions!! The only good thing about it is, sometimes the good piece gets overlooked by the other bidders and the box goes ultra-cheap. I've made a few good buys that way.

I bought an old machinists toolbox for a very low sum and got some good tools but the coolest find was two tickets under the felt for tool room checkouts dated 1950

what is a 'tool room checkout'?

Shops will assign specialy tools to techs to do a specific job and you persoanlly are responsible for its return. Many years ago mechanics were provided tools, even basic tools, now your lucky to even get the specialty tools that cost an arm and a leg,
The ticket was receipt portion of the borrowed tool

I was fooled by a salted "flat" of tools at an auction several weeks ago. I thought I had found a 4" Bergman adjustable in a flat of miscellaneous tools.  After I had won the flat, the Bergman turned out to be a Barcalo! They are similar, with the molded division on each side of the handle, and both being made in Buffalo, NY at about the same time period. Still, I saw what I wanted to see, not what was there.  A cutout 4-inch adjustable, also in the box, was some compensation for having mistaken the Barcalo for a Bergman.