How best to liquidate shop tools

[Gene Davis]

A friend of a friend has a client who needs to liquidate a whole shop full of good power and hand tools, and wants some advice on how to best do it.

My thought would be to interview some good local auction houses, since in this case, going eBay or Craigslist is not going to work, due to the situation.

Your thoughts?

[Roger Green]

In area my area (greater Portland, Oregon) one of the benefits of belonging to the Guild of Oregon Woodworkers is they will do estate & pre-estate sales of member woodworking shop. Maybe there is a guild or woodworking club in the area that can help.

[Randall J Cox]

We had a family of a deceased woodworker donate all his shop tools to the local woodworking club (he was not a member), who in turn had an auction with the proceeds benefiting the club. Nice gesture.

[Jeff Duncan]

Need more details to know "best" way forward. For instance, if it's larger industrial machinery I think they would be far better off with one of the big online auction houses. In these situations live auctions are almost a thing of the past as they don't bring as much revenue. However if it's hobby shop equipment maybe not so much. Is getting the most money the key, or having it gone quickest? Why do e-bay and CL not work? Knowing the reasons they won't work will likely be very helpful in finding what will. I've sold equipment in numerous ways and different types of stuff get sold different ways. So having more info will end up yielding you better results;)

goo luck,
JeffD

[Dave Stuve]

Here are some ideas:

Liquidate sounds like an estate sale to me - my parents had one last year, and they work well for people with stuff but not the time or energy to sell it themselves. Estate sale agents can specialize in different items (antiques or fishing gear for example) so searching for one that knows tools would be a win - they advertise, price, and handle the sale. The upside is that it happens quickly (often in a weekend) and big ticket items are often handled by bid. But the trade off is that for speed you don't always get the best price. Leftover tools that didn't sell can be donated.

Depending on the quality of the tools, either a woodworking school or "maker space" might be interesting in buying a chunk of them.

Tool consignment shops are out there - they will sell your tools for you - they'll be slower than an estate sale, but you might get better prices.

EBay sales agents - there are places that will sell goods for you on EBay for a commission, and they will do everything - pictures, packaging and shipping, etc.

Put 'shop liquidation sale' ad in local woodworker club's newsletter. List major equipment, set a weekend, and sell a lot of the tools at once.

[Aaron Conway]

All good ideas...or he could give them all to me. :)

[john lawson]

I just helped a woman sell off her husband's tools (alzheimers). He had a 40x40 shop pretty much full of tools. He was both a turner and a woodworker so he had a mix of both. I did this at the request of the seller and I was paid.

It took my wife and I six days of work to clean, organize and price the shop and hold the two day sale. I was able to sell maybe 50% of the tools prior to the "day of sale", then I held a two day estate sale in the shop that I advertised to the local guilds and on Craigslist.

The results were that we sold about 95% of the tools and she had a clean garage/shop. I charged her a flat rate that turned out to be a 10% of the value of the total, and I took in trade the only large tool that did not sell plus a few miscellaneous tools. I asked her if she was happy with the result and she told me it was a Godsend for her, she said she had no idea how much was involved.

[Charles Wiggins]

Estate auctions are big here. I always thought of them as taking place after the property owner was deceased but I've been to several that were the owner was present - just downsizing.

[roger wiegand]

Auctions can be good or awful, depending on the auctioneer. An acquaintance's commercial shop was auctioned recently after his death. The auctioneer didn't advertise the auction at all, only his buddies showed up and everything was sold at a fraction of its reasonable value (eg Unisaws in good shape run $500-1000 on CL around here, these (in excellent condition) were sold under $100). If you go the auction route vet the auctioneer carefully.

[Jesse Busenitz]

I've bought most of my tools (3ph, industrial stuff) off CL. Online equipment auctions seems like a good route too. At least it seems like there's plenty of compitition when I'm trying to buy something.