Average used axe/hatchet prices in your region

[junkenstien]

If your not finding rockaways in New Jersey where are they all?Have seen more hewing axes in better shape than any other i think.

 

[crbnSteeladdict]

If your not finding rockaways in New Jersey where are they all?Have seen more hewing axes in better shape than any other i think.

• I have seen few but they are rare. For some reason, Pennsylvania and Upstate New York seem to be the places to look for Rockaways (Even McKinnons. Weird, I know). Couple months back I managed to buy unmarked Plumb Rockaway from big auction site and the seller was from PA, too.
  
• If anybody is looking for Dayton or Michigan pattern axes, NJ is the place to come

 

[npace]

It seems Michigan’s and Dayton’s are spread all over America.

 

[JoeP01]

Here in NorthWest Pennsylvania at garage-sales, estate-sales and junk-shops the average price of an old USA-made axe/hatchet head is about $3-$4, figured from buying dozens of axes or just axe-heads over the last 5-10 years...

Southwestern PA here...same, more or less.

 

[fishiker]

I almost never find axes/hatchets at yardsales or thrift shops and it's been quite a few years since I picked one up at an antique shop. Most of my "new" purchases are made at flea markets. Prices vary dramatically from reasonable to ridiculous. I still occasionally find a good vintage hatchet for $10 or less but they are steadily becoming harder and harder to find.
There's a small indoor flea market not to far from home that we went to Saturday. The first table I walked up to had several axes and hatchets. The vendor was a friendly man who appeared to be in his 70's. I picked up a hatchet that had been used hard. I couldn't see any marks on the head and the handle was too far gone to be saved. It would have made a good winter project. Before I could ask his price he started telling me he saw one just like it online but could do better on his price. He then tried telling me that if held "just right" the lettering could be seen with a magnifying glass. I already expected the price to be too much but wasn't ready for the $50 price tag. There was another hatchet beside it in worse shape. He told me he could cut me a "deal" if I was interested in both for only $75.

 

[gben]

I almost never find axes/hatchets at yardsales or thrift shops and it's been quite a few years since I picked one up at an antique shop.

And what region are you from ???

Dealers at shops and markets will always have premium prices on their items. The Yard and garage and estate sales that individuals hold have the best prices because they are often not knowledgeable about any collectibles, they are just trying to clean out.
If you live in a metropolitan area with a high population density then you are in luck because with no traveling you can go to many second-hand sales. I can see that those who live in small towns and rural areas will have less opportunity.

I never go to sales more than 30 miles from my home, and usually they are much closer than that. My metropolitan area has about a quarter-million people in it, not super-big, but not really small either. But it is in the old industrial area of the USA where all the industrial revolution took place so there were a lot of tool manufacturers in the region, and there were a lot of blue-collar workers with the money to buy tools during that era.

 

[fishiker]

And what region are you from ??? .

I'm in SW Virginia. It's a rural area with the closest regular flea market 30 miles away. We will drive much further if we believe the trip will be worthwhile but not far enough to make it an overnight trip. I'm not saying I never find anything good but the deals are more challenging to find than they once were. I picked up a clean Belknap Bluegrass last month for $8 with a good handle.

 

[gben]

I'm in SW Virginia. It's a rural area with the closest regular flea market 30 miles away. We will drive much further if we believe the trip will be worthwhile but not far enough to make it an overnight trip. I'm not saying I never find anything good but the deals are more challenging to find than they once were. I picked up a clean Belknap Bluegrass last month for $8 with a good handle.

Did the Belknap have an octagon or hex handle?

 

[Welshie12]

I read this thread a few days ago and forgot to reply. Over here in the UK old tool prices have gone a bit stupid for any kind of garden or woodworking tool. I'm only really interested in axes, billhooks and some other related wood working tools so that's all I can really comment on. A few years ago you could pick up something old and decent for very little money but now prices have doubled from what I think they are worth.
I've been looking for another billhook project so will use it as an example. You used to be able to buy a perfectly useable billhook for £20 or less clean it up and your ready to go. Now there are places that sell ready cleaned up and polished billhooks (and all other old tools) for up to £40-£50 for a good example. Very plain one for £35. So that has pulled up the price of junk ones up to beyond sensible. I asked the price of one at a junkyard a while ago. It needed a new handle and the hook at the end was chipped off so would need grinding down flat and then put an edge on or the tip cut off to make more of a heavy knife than a billhook. They wanted £20 for that not knowing how much work it would take to fix up. And assuming it was worth a lot of money because the new cleaned up ones are priced as they are. It's a similar story most places I've tried.
That's if you looking to use them. People that buy the overpriced cleaned up ones must be buying them as decorations or collectibles. You can buy a brand new user for £30ish last time I looked. Probably not as good quality steel as an older one it still useable. Most of everything I've seen is the same. Axes and hatchets I've tried to buy are the same double what I thought they were worth and by the time I'd have spent some time and money putting handles on them and sharpening or whatever it took to get them useable I could have bought a new one to use.
Someone mentioned buying hatchet heads for a few $$ I think somewhere on here? We would have to pay double for them here. In the same junk yard as the billhook I found 2 hatchet heads in a bucket of rusty water. They wanted £5 each for them. Ot valued both together at that. That would be about double your few $$ roughly.
The internet auction site located in the bay has probably made things more expensive. People look up what the tidied up ones make and assume their junk is worth the same.

 

[gben]

Over here in the UK old tool prices have gone a bit stupid for any kind of garden or woodworking tool.

Then in your part of the planet retailers will be able to sell new axes more easily than in areas where old tools are more plentiful and cheap.

It still looks like in most parts of the West at least, it is a better deal to buy an old 20th-century axe head or tool and fix it up than it is to buy a new axe for hundreds of dollars or pounds. Especially since the time you might put into cleaning it and putting a new handle on it can be counted not as an expense, but as an education and positive experience.

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

Especially since the time you might put into cleaning it and putting a new handle on it can be counted not as an expense, but as an education and positive experience.

Labor is a cost, in the form of time. If you need practice? Maybe it's time well-spent. But you're still expending time and effort in exchange for that practice and the finished results. This should still be factored into any assessment of the cost of a vintage tool.

 

[Welshie12]

Then in your part of the planet retailers will be able to sell new axes more easily than in areas where old tools are more plentiful and cheap.

It still looks like in most parts of the West at least, it is a better deal to buy an old 20th-century axe head or tool and fix it up than it is to buy a new axe for hundreds of dollars or pounds. Especially since the time you might put into cleaning it and putting a new handle on it can be counted not as an expense, but as an education and positive experience.

In a way yes but tools are mostly plentiful but a lot are still in use so not for sale. Most houses round here would still have log fires and almost every house has an axe or two.
If you wanted a grasforth bruk quality you'd most definitely be better off buying an old head and doing it up (£100+) but if you wanted a husqvarna y(£40+-) may as well buy new. I don't know anyone who would spend grasforth bruk money for real work though.
And people who can fit new handles are few and far between nowadays. Especially if they need to make one from scratch out of wood they cut the wood out of a tree and season it themselves. I don't know where I could buy a good handle nowadays? The people selling the overpriced heads don't seem to understand that though.

 

[gben]

Labor is a cost, in the form of time. If you need practice? Maybe it's time well-spent. But you're still expending time and effort in exchange for that practice and the finished results. This should still be factored into any assessment of the cost of a vintage tool.

If someone enjoys an activity the time spent on it has nothing to do with money. That would be a hollow, empty, psychotic, sick life that was thinking of money and cost with every minute it spent on every activity. Do you think of the cost of your time when you are eating good food or having great sex? When you are enjoying a great motorcycle ride or a walk on the beach? If doing things with your hands is not enjoyable to you, then you are not doing it for any good reason, and if your entire life is empty of the sort of enjoyment that is timeless and beyond putting monetary value on then everyone should feel sorry for you.

 

[Ernest DuBois]

In the case of a broadaxe or one along such lines,(excuses if I take liberties for the sake of illustration), where you would rarely encounter an original anywhere near ready to be put to use if it weren't reconditioned, preparation work is so significant that, all things being equal, buying new, assuming a certain minimal quality of workmanship, strictly in "economic" terms outweighs the necessary time and (truly banal) labor involved in a recondition. Alternatively having the smid, assuming one who's sufficiently competent is ready at hand, re-steel an old broadaxe is also a more economic route than a proper recondition, on average.

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

If someone enjoys an activity the time spent on it has nothing to do with money. That would be a hollow, empty, psychotic, sick life that was thinking of money and cost with every minute it spent on every activity. Do you think of the cost of your time when you are eating good food or having great sex? When you are enjoying a great motorcycle ride or a walk on the beach? If doing things with your hands is not enjoyable to you, then you are not doing it for any good reason, and if your entire life is empty of the sort of enjoyment that is timeless and beyond putting monetary value on then everyone should feel sorry for you.

There are such a thing as costs that aren't monetary. The only real currency we have in this world is time. Whether or not the use of that time is enjoyable and "worth it" for you is something that needs to assessed when making decisions in life. To frame this differently, imagine that you walked into a magical store that was selling a fully restored, beautiful axe that was made by you from the future! But buying would cost $5 and 8 hours of your life that would be magically siphoned away, and upon completing the purchase you'd get the memories experienced during those 8 hours. Maybe that would be worth it to you, and seem like an okay exchange.

Imagine, instead, that it was the same axe and price, but now the head had a badly worn toe that had needed correcting and now clearly has the appearance of an axe that has experienced heavy use and has become "tired", but the cost is identical. Is it still worth it? Maybe it still is, maybe it isn't. The monetary cost is a pittance, but is that 8 hours still well spent? Now imagine that the memories of the experience are ones filled with frustration because the eye was Permabonded and the handle didn't want to cooperate during removal...still worth it? These are things worth considering. I think we can all agree that it's better to not be careless with the precious time we have on this planet, so asking yourself if you're about to make a favorable exchange or not is worthwhile, and the answer will always vary person to person and context to context.

 

[junkenstien]

Maybe doing it for a living has something to with that way of thinking.I like messing with stuff when i can,never thought of time is money doing something for myself.I spent a fortune fishing i guess.No offense but have you ever had a job?

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

Maybe doing it for a living has something to with that way of thinking.I like messing with stuff when i can,never thought of time is money doing something for myself.I spent a fortune fishing i guess.No offense but have you ever had a job?

Honestly I'm not sure how you intend for that to not be taken as offensive. I've had plenty of jobs, and a business degree. I don't think you're understanding that things having a cost, whether in money, time, or anything else, doesn't mean that it's unwise to spend that resource to get something, whether that be tangible or intangible. It's just something to consider when determining if something is worth it to you. And that just because something is worth it to you in your unique context doesn't inherently mean that it's worth it to someone else.

So yes, if you've spent a lot of time fishing...you've chosen to expend that amount of your limited time on Earth doing something you (presumably) enjoy. I don't think anyone is going to fault you for that. That's kind of the point, even. Spend as much of your time as possible doing things you consider meaningful and/or enjoyable. Sometimes that does mean that you need to go through a bottleneck of sorts by doing unpleasant things now that will allow you to do more easily do enjoyable things later, for instance. Building skills can be one of those things. But for some people, they're going to have more limited time available to spend on that kind of a task because they're busy with other things or may currently lack the tools, space, or simply the inclination for doing such work, and they may get more enjoyment out of just buying an axe that's ready for use and spending that time on something else instead--like using that axe, or something like...fishing.

I'm just saying that it's not as simple as "Option A: spend $5 on a vintage head, Option B: spend $60 on a mid-grade new axe". Option A also costs time, effort, and relies on you having the (granted, simple) tools to do the necessary work and a place to use them. So there's requirements and costs present that simply make for a more nuanced choice at an individual level based on their unique context. Long story short, different people have different needs and wants than you. So the choices that are best for them may be different than yours, and there's possibly very good reasons for that.

 

[junkenstien]

Know your a homesteader and you have an online shop,thats why i asked about haveing a job.Meant no offense only if you have had a price attached to your time. Suppose I'm just simple and thought most on hobby forums are looking to kill time.

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

It's something I definitely enjoy doing, myself, but I know a lot of folks more casual about axes that just like to buy something off the shelf. Also, there's some analog to what I run into with folks just starting up scything. Many beginners look at the cost of a new scythe vs. that of an antique and go "dang, that's a big difference! I'll just get an old one!" and then they have a horrible time with it because it needs so much work to be brought up to mowing readiness and because of their inexperience they have no frame of reference for what they're shooting for. With axes the fundamentals of use are a bit simpler, and a tool in bad shape will at least still get the job done in many circumstances, but it amounts to a lot of wasted effort using a damaged/worn tool. Starting with a well-made new axe that's been ground properly ready for use and of good design for their intended context can help them figure out the ins and outs of the tool easier so that later on they can be better equipped for restoring those old barn finds. Sort of a "learn to walk before you run" situation. For folks already well-versed in the tool's maintenance that equation plays out a little differently.

 

[gben]

[QUOTE="Ernest DuBois, post: 19555230, member: 339276" outweighs the necessary time and (truly banal) labor involved in a recondition. [/QUOTE]

Assuming everyone else on earth looks at particular activities the same way you do seems ignorant. A LOT of people repair old objects and if they think the activity is banal then they need some sort of guidance to find an activity they enjoy, or to look at what they are doing in a different way.