www.owwm.net

So… Let’s say you’re driving down the street and you see a hulking hunk of iron machinery sitting on the curb with a cardboard sign with the word “free” scrawled on it with a broad tip marker; Or, maybe an elderly relative passes away and you’re the person responsible for cleaning up the mess they made after 50 years of hoarding junk (I pity the poor soul that get’s that job on my rat hole); Or maybe you are going to an auction and are interested in bidding on a piece of old machinery and just don’t know how high you should go; Maybe you see a piece on e-bay or craigslist or kijiji or some other site and you just don’t know if it’s a deal or if it’s fool’s gold…  How do you find out what the real value of this junk?  You could go to a whole bunch of auctions and build your own index of prices, but that would take years… You could check prices on e-bay, but it’s gotten to be very difficult to tell what something actually sold for versus the typically unrealistic asking prices. You could ask a machinery dealer to help you value the piece, but they have an interest in preserving their business model (buy as low as possible and sell as high as possible), so any opinion there will likely be colored by their goal of making money.

What other choices do you have? You could go to an on-line community of collectors and restorers and ask them to collectively help you with valuation. Unfortunately, they’d be unwilling to offer you any help at all. And any do-gooders, helpful sorts, etc that you might find there are prevented from helping you by the rules:

Appraisals: Do not ask for or give appraisals.  Without seeing a machine in person, there are too many unknowns. In addition, prices vary considerably by location, condition, age, ease of pick up or delivery, and so on.  Your best option is to search for available sale prices, such as completed sales on eBay (as opposed to listing prices with no bids), listings on our own “Bring Out Your Dead” forum, and other sale sites.

I’m not sure why this rule exists. They give a bunch of reasons that don’t make any sense to the newcomer or casual visitor. More of a RTFM response than anything else.  They also have a real aversion to any sort of controversy. If there was a difference of opinion it might result in a healthy argument which is definitely discouraged. Anyway, you won’t get any help from this group either.

I field a handful of requests for appraisal on value and fitness of purpose on a weekly basis. This week the number of requests finally hit the tipping point and I started thinking about what I could do to streamline the process. This page is my first attempt at the improved process. First I need a few lay out the terms of service, disclaimers, etc:

• I’m not an expert. I see a lot of machines. I go to more auctions than anyone I know. My guess at what something will sell for is usually pretty close.
• I make mistakes. It has cost me money. If you listen to me, it could cost you money.
• I’m not a machinery dealer. I’m an IT guy and a machinery opportunist.
• Valuations are tough to do from pictures and written descriptions. Factors that affect value are often missed in pictures. Old repairs, wear and other factors are difficult for the uninitiated to spot/gauge.
• Prices do vary widely by region. I’ll try to factor this in. Just remember that if you’re in Seattle and you see a much different price in New Jersey.

I’m going to do this with the comments section of this page. Just post your request in the “Leave a Reply” section at the bottom of the page. I’ll review the request and post my answer in a reply to the comment. I’ve also enabled the ability to upload pictures with your comments. I strongly recommend that you use this feature as it will vastly improve accuracy. At least you’ll be able to scroll through the requests and see if something similar was already submitted.

Eventually, I’ll try to install a discussion plugin which will allow a little more flexibility in the request and response. I may even ask some other folks to act as experts in certain areas. We’ll se how this goes first. If there’s a big enough demand, I’ll work on improvements and expansion.

You can find the new submission page in the tabs at the top of the home page (it’s the fourth tab from the right):

Appraisal tab

You can post your request in the comments section at the bottom of the page. I’ve just installed a plugin that allows images to be attached to the comment. Look for this at the bottom of the page:

Image submission with comment

Thanks for looking.

-the owwm

Tags: Machinery Appraisal, Machinery valuation, old woodworking machines, owwm