Reasonable price for vintage #4 and #5

[Daniel Rode]

I'm looking to pick up a Stanley Bailey #4 and #5 in user condition. I'm willing to do some basic cleanup but nothing too drastic. Based on my experience with my 1905-1910 #6, I want something pre WWII if possible. These should be as common as grains of sand.

What's a reasonable price for these planes. Is there a better place to look other than eBay?

[Jim Koepke]

Ebay usually involves shipping and sometimes the shipping is more than one of these is worth.

The #4 and #5 are the most common sizes available on the used market. My preference is for pre 1929 (type 14) when the raised ring was added for the front knob.

Places to look would be:

Craigs list, I believe a search & alert can be set up.

Yard & Garage sales, some local news papers have listings of these.

Thrift stores often have some good finds. The problem is if you are in an area where someone else is looking for items to buy and sell they may already have an in with someone in the store or they may drop in regularly or get there early every day.

Junk and antique stores often have old planes. When I go into an antique or other store I always ask the person in the store about hand tools. They are also often open to negotiation on prices.

There is also an off shoot of Habitat for Humanity called The Restore. They often have old tools. A lot of pickers have them on their regular rounds.

Pawn shops often have old tools. Sometimes they have been on the shelf for a long time. Often the tag price is high, but sometimes they will negotiate.

As far as price is concerned, condition is everything. My first #5 at a flea market was $35. I sold it for the same amount a few years later. After learning a bit more about hand planes my price range has been held in the under $30 range on the #4 or #5 planes. A few in the $10 and under range.

For my use it is convenient to have a couple of #4s to switch off if a blade goes dull. Sometimes one is set for a heavier cut than the other.

With the #5s one is set for fine work and the other is set for coarse work. If one wanted to use another for a scrub plane that would be a good reason to have 3. There are 4 in my shop.

Happy hunting,

jtk

[Dan Hulbert]

I lived in NE Ohio from 79-97 and bought most of my planes there. Try Unionville. They have a great antique show annually or maybe even twice each year. There was an auction place between Madison and Perry, I think it was on Route 84. For users, at flea markets, I top out at about $20.

Head out early on Friday mornings for the best picking at garage sales. One of my favorite planes is a corrigated #5 I picked up for $3 at a garage sale in Ashtabula. Looked like hell and needed a new tote. I think it was the first plane I actualled fettled. Now I keep it close at hand.

[David Weaver]

If you're buying on ebay, look for a plane that has a decent shape chipbreaker, good wood, a full length iron that you can see the back of and that has no more than light rust. No casting problems (breaks, huge scratches or cracks, or repairs)

It shouldn't be more than about $40 + shipping, though you'll see gobs of sellers thinking they should get twice as much.

Best place to find what you can expect to get with just a little bit of patience is sold listings on ebay.

If you're out in the wild, prices will go from a few bucks to ...gobs of sellers thinking they should get twice or three times market price.

[Daniel Rode]

Thanks for the advice!

Garage sales take a lot of time and travel. Time is not something I have in excess. I regularly prowl craigslist but I rarely see anything and what I do see is in poor condition. The Dunlap I just got for $5 is an exception but it was cheap new and did not improve with age. I wouldn't have paid more than $10 for it.

The result is that I'm probably stuck with eBay or a dealer of some type. $40 + shipping is not awful considering the time and gas saved.

I have a WR #4 and a #6c, so I can afford to wait for a deal.

[David Weaver]

If you find a good bailey pattern 5 with a relatively fresh chipbreaker, it literally will be the plane you use for the rest of your life for coarse work if you choose to do so, and you could measure your success in using it a lot by the number of irons you're able to expend before you are too old to use it.

It is, to me, the best designed metal plane ever made. Made good enough to do what it is supposed to do with ease, and inexpensive enough to be affordable when it was made. The cap iron, iron, lever cap setup in design in general is a thing of genius in that it will plane anything, sharpen easily and assemble and disassemble with no extra tools.

Given that it's probably going to cost about $40 to get a good one on ebay, it's worth spending the $40 on vs. $10 on a DIYer grade plane made back then. Millers falls 14s are an option - look for a red frog, and other considerations the same as above. Their castings are a little bit softer and easier to lap, and their adjusters a little bit cheaper and more sloppy, and the wood on some of them is a bit bulkier. Before I got control of myself, I bought 5 millers falls 9s and 14s for an average price of $10 off of ebay. You can still get them cheap sometimes.

[Mike Brady]

I lived in NE Ohio from 79-97 and bought most of my planes there. Try Unionville. They have a great antique show annually or maybe even twice each year. There was an auction place between Madison and Perry, I think it was on Route 84. For users, at flea markets, I top out at about $20.

Head out early on Friday mornings for the best picking at garage sales. One of my favorite planes is a corrigated #5 I picked up for $3 at a garage sale in Ashtabula. Looked like hell and needed a new tote. I think it was the first plane I actualled fettled. Now I keep it close at hand.

You would find nothing at those prices here in the Chicago area. Stanley planes at any price are pretty rare here except at MWTCA meets, where there are many at $40.-50. This is also 2014, not 1997. If you have access to $20.00 Stanley user planes, you might want to get some together and come here to sell them. You could easily double your money and there are many places to sell them.

[Prashun Patel]

If you want a decent user at fair prices, I'd buy on SMC. I think there's an active posting on classifieds right now, I believe.

If you want bargain prices with a little bit of risk and more clean up, then scour Craigslist.

[David Weaver]

You would find nothing at those prices here in the Chicago area. Stanley planes at any price are pretty rare here except at MWTCA meets, where there are many at $40.-50. This is also 2014, not 1997. If you have access to $20.00 Stanley user planes, you might want to get some together and come here to sell them. You could easily double your money and there are many places to sell them.

I have a bedrock #5 that I bought from chicago for $65. It was a heck of a deal.

I got it from...


....

...

Mike brady! :)

It's the only iron 5 I've kept.

[Moses Yoder]

The price with knowledgeable sellers is inversely proportionate to the time it will take to make it usable.

[John Crawford]

Having just spent some time searching for the same, I agree with $50 including shipping for a nice one. You can do a search of completed auctions and "sold" auctions under "advanced search" in ebay. This will tell you what they are selling for there. Of course you will always meet people who will tell you their stories about buying theirs for $20 for these in mint condition.... Do make sure the irons are ok. I got my brilliant #5 for a decent price, only to have it arrive with a pitted iron....

[Mike Holbrook]

July 15 of this year I won a bid for, Stanley/Bailey no. 4 C Smooth Plane, Pat 1919, good usable condition, no problems with the wood $39.99. July 9 of this year I won,Stanley/Bailey No. 5 C "Sweetheart", very good & clean condition $51.00. July 9 of this year I won a bid for, 1910 Stanley/Bailey #6 C plane for $64.95.

I looked at #6 Stanley planes for some months loosing several bids of up to $63 for planes in nice usable condition. The plane I bought for $64.95 was a straight buy out not a real bid. I think the planes I bought are of the type the OP is thinking about so I thought this info. might help. I spent several months watching bids until I thought I knew about what the market was for those types of planes at that time. Someone willing to make lots of bids over a month or two might do a little better on the prices. All three of the planes I bought required no wood work or time consuming cleaning to make them usable. I suspect the 6 C market was a little competitive at that time but I did not care to spend more time and energy to save $10 - $15.

I often find the prices mentioned on these threads to be overly optimistic or the planes bought to require more work than I currently want to invest.

[Daniel Rode]

I bought a very nice 6c from another SMC member a few months ago. I took it apart, light cleaning and oil, flattened and sharpened the iron and put it right to work. 100 years old and it's back to work :) It's the reason I'm now looking for a similar #4 and #5. In fact I have a WR #4 but I think I'll prefer a vintage smoother. The #5 is intended as a shooting plane as well as coarser general work. Eventually, I think I'll end up with 2 #5s one dedicated to shooting and one for for general purpose. We'll see.



July 15 of this year I won a bid for, Stanley/Bailey no. 4 C Smooth Plane, Pat 1919, good usable condition, no problems with the wood $39.99. July 9 of this year I won,Stanley/Bailey No. 5 C "Sweetheart", very good & clean condition $51.00. July 9 of this year I won a bid for, 1910 Stanley/Bailey #6 C plane for $64.95.

I looked at #6 Stanley planes for some months loosing several bids of up to $63 for planes in nice usable condition. The plane I bought for $64.95 was a straight buy out not a real bid. I think the planes I bought are of the type the OP is thinking about so I thought this info. might help. I spent several months watching bids until I thought I knew about what the market was for those types of planes at that time. Someone willing to make lots of bids over a month or two might do a little better on the prices. I suspect the 6 C market was a little competitive at that time but I did not care to spend more time and energy to save the $10 - $15 I thought I might save.

[Jim Matthews]

The price with knowledgeable sellers is inversely proportionate to the time it will take to make it usable.

Oh, that's good.

I'm stealing it, and will claim I said it first.

[Jim Matthews]

Drop Tom Bussey a line.

He rehabilitates older planes to a condition
rivaling today's "boutique" planes at a fraction
of the retail price.

[Daniel Rode]

Tom and I are in contact. It's a more expensive route so I'd have to put off getting a #4 for a while but a #5 done by him will be dead flat and square which makes it a perfect shooting plane for me.


Drop Tom Bussey a line.

He rehabilitates older planes to a condition
rivaling today's "boutique" planes at a fraction
of the retail price.

[Greg Portland]

I'm looking to pick up a Stanley Bailey #4 and #5 in user condition. I'm willing to do some basic cleanup but nothing too drastic. Based on my experience with my 1905-1910 #6, I want something pre WWII if possible. These should be as common as grains of sand.

What's a reasonable price for these planes. Is there a better place to look other than eBay?
I'm fairly new to hand tool woodworking and I've been happy with some old Craftsman planes and an old Sargent 422C. I've used old Stanleys and these are just as good once everything is tuned and sharpened. I've heard that old Miller Falls is another good option. The most I've paid was $35 for the Sargent and that's because the antique store thought they had a Stanley (blade was Stanley, rest was Sargent). I have a Veritas low-angle block + rear grip (got as a gift) and use it heavily. It's adjusts better than my other planes and is rock solid but I'm not sure that would justify the cost delta to people starting out. If it only takes me another 15-20 seconds to adjust the other planes then that's not a big deal for me.

[Stew Denton]

Hi Daniel,

I spent some significant time looking at the sold prices of Stanley Bailey #4s about a month ago. I specifically was looking at type 10 to type 15s, because those are the ones I was and am interested in. When I priced these types collectively as a group, I included shipping and the cost of replacing any broken parts. For example, if the tote on a plane was broken, I would include what a replacement Ebay tote would cost including shipping and then added that into the price. I then tabulated the price over the period of time that I looked at, made it into a histogram and found the mean price of the planes and then looked at the price range over which covered the lions share of the planes.

What I found was the mean price of a plane in good user condition, price determined as above, was about $60. Now, in many or most cases, the plane would need to be cleaned up, and would have some mild to moderate corrosion. I didn't price ones that I thought were so far gone as to be rust buckets, or would take a lot of time to restore. Price ranges ran from about $40 to about $80. As with any auction, the planes in better shape tended to sell for more, but not always.

Sometimes folks got bargains it seemed, and part of the time I would think "how did that plane sell for that much money?"

At any rate, for the period of time that I priced the planes, a price of $45 was a very good price, and most of the time the plane was going to cost you around $60.

If you are willing to stick it out and bid fairly often, you can get a bargain, but there are enough folks watching planes on Ebay I seriously doubt that you are going to get an incredible bargain. Thus if you wait long enough you can save $20, but the bargains that are much less than this are very rare.

I have enough #5s that I no longer even look at them, nor the prices

Regards,

Stew

[don wilwol]

A nicely cleaned and-or restored, tuned and sharpened #4 can easily go for $80-$100. If you've ever restored a hand plane you know the seller isn't making a fortune. If you're up to tuning and cleaning yourself, it depends on your willingness to hunt for a deal. Antiquing is what my wife and I do to lose the rest of the world, so the time doesn't count. If you enjoy it, then deals can be found. I've paid as little as $5 for some restorable planes. I paid $10 for a type 1 Sargent 409.

If time is money for you, then find a reputable dealer or one of the guys on the woodworking forums who re-sell, and get one ready to go. If you want to restore but don't want to take the time to hunt for it, there are a few of use who re-sell that way as well.

Deals can be found on ebay as well, but it also takes time.

Its all about your interest.

[ken hatch]

Josh at Hyperkitten is a better option than eBay and costs very little more up front but in the long run is cheaper because of the eBay burn rate. He gives a good description of the tool, sends it, if you like you pay for it, if not send it back to him. It is that simple. I've never had to send one back because it wasn't as described.

[Mike Cherry]

I recently got a bedrock 7 from Tom Bussey and it is easily,as someone mentioned earlier, on par with a modern premium plane.

[Daniel Rode]

This may seem backwards to some but I'll probably sell my Wood River #4 in favor of a vintage Stanley Bailey. I have a modern Stanley #4. While is absolute junk, I very much prefer the weight and style.