I only regret not starting 10-15+ years ago ...
It didn't help me much.
When I started, almost 40 years ago, there were no clubs. No books, no groups, much less national collecting in any way.
"Tool guys" were mangy fringe characters at the last edge of the swap meet, carting around big boxes and carts of rusty dirty old tools nobody wanted at any price. People would sidestep the area they worked and not meet their eye. Tool sellers were pretty similar to guys who pick up cans for a living now, and held in much the same esteem by society. Always dirty, clinging to things nobody wanted.
In the shops, tools were in the outright junk stores. Places called Trading Post or Arky Don's or Mister X, out on the edge of town. They were filled with old toasters and chipped glassware and moldering bowling bags, in rundown old buildings on the margins with awful lighting where the paint was peeling, the rent was cheap and everything always dirty.
Or sometimes in bottom of the barrel "antique shops" whose main difference between the junk shops was the sign, but found in the same locations. Shops that never had any quality goods and were probably going to go out of business in 3 months time.
And always the tools would be in the back down on the floor underneath the last sales tables. They were just old tools.
This was where the tools were, and they were dirt cheap. Whatever they had, whatever you found, was cheap.
But I was dead broke and often had to haggle hard over 25 cent buys.
I saw so many great things go by. Wonderful tools of all kinds.
I had no idea some of them would eventually be worth the price of a house, or others a very good car. They were all just old used tools then. Some a bit more attractive than others.
Nobody was saying how much difference that little bit of attractiveness was going to be worth someday.
A beech plow only worth 40 dollars even now,.... or a rosewood worth $400 or $4,000 or $40,000 or $249,000 value someday, if it was "a little better". And they were just as likely to be side by side, and little difference in price.
But whatever it was, if it was priced at 3 dollars I could only sigh and keep moving.
I wanted tools to start my woodworking. I had babies to raise and a poor young life to struggle through. If I wanted to try my hand at woodworking, it would have to be almost for free.
I had to take old hand tools and learn to make them work. It was all I could afford.
And I did get some. I still have a precious few from those times.
But hardly anything and I never did have all that much.
I just saw it go by.
Life is long.
And its weird
yours Scott
