Local Craig List ads

[Rick Potter]

I was looking at CL tool ads yesterday, at about 11AM, then got back to them about 11PM. In that 12 hour period, over 450 new ads were listed on my local CL tool section. Just now, I looked at the local tool section again, and there are a total of 7430 ads listed, including an even 100 radial arm saws, and 156 table saws.

I knew there were a lot, but those numbers surprised me.

Too bad the number of really good deals has actually dwindled. I guess that means the economy must be picking up.

[Moses Yoder]

I guess my 33-890 Delta radial arm saw at $155 on ebay local pick up only was a good enough deal to get a guy to sit in his truck from Bowling Green Ohio to White Pigeon MI. I started on Craigslist at $250 and just slowly lowered the price then posted it on ebay and accepted his offer. Now I am rid of it on Saturday and have money for more lanterns. I am planning on sharpening and using a really good hand saw for cutting to length. Foot print 6 square inches. I am rid of the last of my big tools now, keeping my table saw and band saw and deciding to keep my jointer after realizing I would only get a hundred bucks for it. I sold a shaper, very large air compressor, dust collector, and radial arm saw, 2 items sold on Craigslist and 2 on ebay local pickup.

[Brian W Smith]

That's a lot.....to me.

CL discussionas are or can be as vague as some of the ads sometimes?Meaning "dwindled",it MUST be geographic.Further vagueness is the cost ratio(or whatever financial folks call it),values devided by somesuch.So theres always this veil of money(or sumthin) with CL,and to me,is just as present with the bay?I do like watching these two arena's going at it....in real time....reality inter-weeb?

[Brian Elfert]

That is about the same number of ads we get on the Minneapolis Craigslist in the tools section every day. Many of them I notice are re-posts of the same ads once a day or more.

[Steve Peterson]

That is about the same number of ads we get on the Minneapolis Craigslist in the tools section every day. Many of them I notice are re-posts of the same ads once a day or more.

You would have to continuously re-post your add to maintain visibility when there are that many posts coming in.

Steve

[Brian Elfert]

You would have to continuously re-post your add to maintain visibility when there are that many posts coming in.

Craigslist has this unique feature called a search box. You can search for whatever tool you are interested in.

The re-posts just clutter up the tools section and make it nearly impossible to browse through the tools section. Now, most of the real buys are on things that are misnamed so a search is worthless. I think the real buys are stuff posted in sections besides tools, but finding those is like finding a needle in a hay stack.

[Rick Potter]

Like Brian says, some of the best buys I have found are vaguely titled, or posted without pics. For example, an ad titled 'tools for sale', with no other descriptor, and a pic of a rusty wheelbarrow. Then you open it up and it says something like 'we have an old saw too', with a pic of a unisaw under a pile of household boxes, and it says 'make offer, belonged to my grandfather'.

OK, OK, I made this one up, but have found several gems which were hidden in such a way, like my Rn900 Omga RAS. It was left at a house, and the new owner just wanted it gone, offering to give it to me for a case of beer. I paid him $100 for it.

[Brian Henderson]

Unfortunately, my local Craigslist is pretty sad, there are very few woodworking tools at all and the ones that are there are vastly overpriced or rusted-out crap. While I'm not looking for any tools, occasionally I go looking through the tool section and most of it has nothing to do with woodworking at all. Just as an experiment, I tried searching for "jointer" and found only 10 offered since the beginning of the year, 90% of them benchtop.

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

I knew there were a lot, but those numbers surprised me.

Too bad the number of really good deals has actually dwindled. I guess that means the economy must be picking up.

Try looking at different regions of CL. You'll be in for more of a surprise. It's been awhile since I looked around, but I saw the smaller markets could keep their ads up for 30-45 days while the large markets will only keep an ad active for as little as 3 days before they expire it.

There still are good deals to be had. There are smartphone apps that will send you alerts when a key word is posted in the region(s) you selected. There are also "search all CL" web sites that come in handy. (I prefer to use SearchTempest as I can specify the region to search and the distance I'm willing to go.)

We buy & sell on CL on a regular basis and often travel great distances to buy the item we are looking for. Thankfully everyone we have ever had a transaction with has been fantastic. We have also weeded out suspicious people too - but that's because we are cautious about our transactions.