Lee Valley Annual “Seconds” sale announced

[JOEL MONGEON]

I couldn't check out fast enough! Half my cart was sold out before I could pay.
Glad your sale went so smoothly. I even bought a shooting board to go with my unexpected shooting plane.

[David Bassett]

... And no system crash......

Come on folks, step up to the challenge!

PS- I did my part already. (Good news / bad news situation. I must be pretty well provisioned, I already have the things I wanted. I did grab a miniature tool because, they're cute.)

[Alex Kapl]

picked up low angle jack

[Adam Grund]

I was in 4 minutes into the sale.
Virtually every plane I was "Jonsing" was sold out.
Oh well, there were 4500 people ahead of me in the mix. What did I expect?

Lucky for me, had to take my dad to a doc appt today and had already exhausted every other avenue of browsing that could capture my attention by time the sale came around, so I hopped on at the beginning also. With about the same people ahead of me, and the same entrance time- but man that felt like a smooth operation.
I oogled a bunch, ended up picking up both dovetail saws. Had to do 2 different carts, the first time I accidentally picked the 20tpi version and didn’t realize it until I cashed out. Oops! Oh well, now I got the set.
Had thoughts of buying much more, but coming in to our slow season I decided to be a bit conservative.

[Jason White]

A couple of things I wanted were sold out, but I was able to score a 4-1/2 custom smoother for less than the one that I had on backorder. So I saved some money and I'm going to get my new smoother sooner than expected! 😍

[Jason White]

Rob -- it went beautifully. Thanks so much for the great shopping experience!

The answer, we hope, is "well"....

Advantages - there is no need get up early, or try to be "first". Previous years, we had volume issues that were not representative of the number of people trying to access the site. For example- hitting "refresh" kept spooling new jobs that overwhelmed the interface with our main system. We are scaled to accommodate large numbers of concurrent users. We also anticipate that it will smooth out the checkout process - by removing the "derby" element to the process. We will scale the concurrent number of visitors in real time, as we watch system performance. Those in the waiting room will have a live estimate of "wait time". If this works how we anticipate - everyone will get in in very short order.

Disadvantages - everyone coming to the site will have to go through the "waiting room", whether visiting the sale or not - there was just no way to implement it otherwise.....

This year - there is a lot of inventory in some items..... so everyone should have a crack at something. There are at least two planes with more than 300 seconds available (ouch) , and more than 500 20 TPI Dovetail saws (ouch again).

We have our fingers crossed.....

Cheers -

Rob

[Jason White]

You will love it. One of my very favorite tools.

picked up low angle jack

[Assaf Oppenheimer]

I didn't get a chance, every time I put something in the cart it was marked as sold out by the time I got to pay...

oh well, next year...

[Tom Levy]

I somehow got all my selections, but saw things going fast.

4500 people waiting?? Are there really that many people who do hand tools and buy modern and know about the sale? I would guess the 200-300 people from this forum would be the top end range of #s queuing up for the 2nds sale.

[Jim Koepke]

Went to my eye exam and got back to find there were 20 ppi dovetail saws still available, so snagged one.

The 14 ppi for my grandson was so nice it was easy to spoil myself for one with a finer tooth count than my own saws.

Almost went for some of the miniature tools but decided to close the wallet. Did buy a couple of steel door hanger magnets.

Many other items were marked sold out.

jtk

[Rob Lee]

I somehow got all my selections, but saw things going fast.

4500 people waiting?? Are there really that many people who do hand tools and buy modern and know about the sale? I would guess the 200-300 people from this forum would be the top end range of #s queuing up for the 2nds sale.

Yes - there really are that many!

[Adam Grund]

Went to my eye exam and got back to find there were 20 ppi dovetail saws still available, so snagged one.

The 14 ppi for my grandson was so nice it was easy to spoil myself for one with a finer tooth count than my own saws.
jtk

Oh good! I had thought of you when I got on to the site this afternoon, thinking how your eye exam was right during the sale. Was a bit disappointed I hadn’t thought to ask if you’d like me to purchase whatever you were looking for and have it shipped to you, and then figure out repayment. So I’m glad you were able to snag what you were looking for.

[Jim Koepke]

Oh good! I had thought of you when I got on to the site this afternoon, thinking how your eye exam was right during the sale. Was a bit disappointed I hadn’t thought to ask if you’d like me to purchase whatever you were looking for and have it shipped to you, and then figure out repayment. So I’m glad you were able to snag what you were looking for.

Thanks for the thoughts Adam. My odds were pretty good when Rob Lee mentioned there were 500 seconds (OUCH!) on the 20 ppi dovetail saw. There were even 14 ppi dovetail saws left which was pretty tempting, but there is already one at that tooth count in my shop.

The 20 will be great for thin stock.

It currently appears there are only five items left, two of which are the dovetail saws.

jtk

[Aaron Rosenthal]

On the other hand, the Cyber Monday sale may not gave tools, but I can still lust after a few items with a fresh, spanking new gift card at a discount!

[David Publicover]

I thought it was a very well run operation this year. I was able to snag a medium shoulder plane and a LH skew rabbet plane. I had a couple other things but they disappeared during checkout. Oh well, someone else got some nice chisels. There’s a LV Store nearby, so I’ll get chisels another day.
Thanks to Rob for making it possible!