Keywords for hunting out good tools on auction sites

[Shaun Mahood]

I've found a couple decent deals on the craigslist copy that is popular around here (kijiji), and was wondering if anyone had a list of good keywords that might pull up some good old tools. I can set it to email me new listing with particular search parameters, and it would be great if anyone had ideas of keywords that might be listed by someone who knows nothing about woodworking tools might post in their description. Maybe some brand names that are very visible (disston, stanley) and generally indicate quality, and there are tons of brand names on here that I have never heard of.
Thanks!

[Gary Curtis]

It has been my experience that sellers often don't know what they have. This is true on eBay, on Craigslist. At swap meets and estate sales, it's true also. When they do in fact know, prices go up. Tools such as Dovetail Saws are called by an assortment of names --- Backsaw, Brass Back Saw, etc.

[Jerome Hanby]

I've found my best deals when I've located postings that had poor descriptions. For example, I found my Unisaw listed as Delta saw. Break up words and put them together too, example scroll saw and scrollsaw. Also try common misspelling and common typos. I found my wife's Hegner scroll saw listed as a scrool saw with no brand, but I recognized the picture. There are so many watchdog programs that it's hard to snag a great deal on "properly" listed items before someone beats you to them.

Also it's hard to beat persistence. I have a couple of areas that I watch off and on throughput the day. I always look at the latest item in the list so that I can tell how far down the list I've already scanned. That item will show up as already visited to once I get down to it, i know I've seen all the new listings.

[Dave Schwarzkopf]

Sorry in advance, couldn't help it, but the following have brought back at least a laugh:

"Saw" AND "clock" OR "paint" OR "landscape"
also
"Handplane Lamp"


I've never had much luck finding anything that was worth bidding on, or that hadn't already progressed beyond what I was willing to pay.

Dave

[Jim Koepke]

It is amazing how many items show up under cast or iron. When I am looking for blades words like iron, cutter, knife and knives are included.

If you are looking for a plane include plain. Remember that plane will usually find planes, but planes won't find plane.

It also depends on what you are searching. Take some time on ebay searching and see what words work.

I knew someone who was looking for a slick and wasn't having luck at winning bids until they started looking for spud and barker. Same thing, less competition.

jtk

[daniel lane]

As far as CL search terms, I've had zero luck searching for anything - all my (few) finds have come from just browsing. I'm looking forward to learning something from this thread!

Perusing CL, myriad typos and misnomers abound! My favorite have been all the variations on a theme for reciprocating saw: sawsaw, sawzaw, sawzal, sawzall, sawsall, saws-all, saw-sall, and sawzawl (really? with a second 'w'?) are the ones I can remember. I have zero need and am not in the market for one, but it seems I am forever finding new names for them...



daniel

[Andrae Covington]

I've found a couple decent deals on the craigslist copy that is popular around here (kijiji), and was wondering if anyone had a list of good keywords that might pull up some good old tools. I can set it to email me new listing with particular search parameters, and it would be great if anyone had ideas of keywords that might be listed by someone who knows nothing about woodworking tools might post in their description. Maybe some brand names that are very visible (disston, stanley) and generally indicate quality, and there are tons of brand names on here that I have never heard of.
Thanks!

For the craigslist type sites, the generic terms "antique" and "vintage" (used separately) will probably get you more results than you really want, but as Gary said, a lot of sellers really have no idea what they have, they just figure it's old. Although there's still a lot of irrelevant junk to sift through, this can bring items to your attention that are misspelled, improperly identified, etc. I doubt that it is possible to actually think up all of the ways people manage to misspell /mistype the names of things.

[Zach Dillinger]

Right, like I'm going to tell you....

Kidding! The guys in the thread have it right. My standing eBay search, given my lack of interest in metal planes, is in the collectible tools area: plain plane -stanley -dunlap -millers -sargent. Also, for whatever reason, I see a lot of backsaws sold as hardback saws, at least in my area.

[David Weaver]

I do like Zach if I want something, I set up a standing search and try to weed out everything that ends up being out of my budget 99% of the time (like a really clean looking stanley plane, pretty much anything clean and disston, etc).

Let ebay's search function do the work for you and send you stuff that's likely to end up decent price, and then once you find something you might want, set up an esnipe with your max price and let esnipe do the work for you to follow your auctions around.

A side benefit if esnipe is if you put a bid up on 4 things and you only want one of them, it'll tell you when you win the first of any of the items you have set up, and you can just go cancel all of the future bids for other items if you want. Unlike ebay where you'd have to put a bid in on one thing, and then subsequently go back and keep putting bids on more items after each unsuccessful auction ended.

I go for off-brand saws on ebay and for wooden planes, pretty much anything where the picture is good, the iron is good and the plane doesn't have a beat up mouth and sole. For some reason, people love to call wooden bench planes "block planes", I guess because they think they're made of a block of wood.

[Jason Coen]

I found a LN #7 on CL once.

But then realized the seller posts on here.... (Hi Salem!)

[Steve Branam]

"sharp"

hahahaha, I kill myself with these jokes!

Listing a tool for sale as sharp is like listing a car for sale with "full tank". Like that would really convince me it's a good one!

[Mel Miller]

A site called "Search Tempest" can help you search Craigslist. You can search more than one city, or say, up to 1000 miles from you. I see a lot of misspelling on CL, one of my favorites is "latter", which makes it hard to find that particular item. I don't have much luck finding reasonable priced hand woodworking tools on CL.

Mel

[Mark Wyatt]

Around here, people like to call planes "shavers" or "wood shaves" or some other variation. The only deals I've ever found on Craigslist are where people do not list a picture and you have to invest time and effort to find out what they really have.

[Shaun Mahood]

Man, I'm so glad I asked this question, if just for the laughs! There are some molding shaves on right now
For whatever reason, it seems like in every city in Canada a different "buy and sell" site has gained prominence - since everything is supposed to be a cash deal in person, it seems like there are better deals to be found if you are looking for something weird here. My favourite thing I've ever seen was 2 llamas for free!