Announcements

April 28, 2016:   Tool Sales To Begin Shortly

The previously announced sales of our tool inventory will commence on or about April 29 with listings by EBay seller airbuff101, a highly experienced seller who is probably well known to many of our readers. The pace and timing of the listings will be determined by the seller, but readers can expect to see several dozen or more lots offered every week.

Please keep in mind that our inventory is substantially larger than the tools displayed on the site, so even if you are familiar with all of the tools shown here, you may find a long-sought item for your collection.

We trust that our readers interested in expanding their collections will watch the listings closely, and good luck with your acquisitions!

April 25, 2016:   New Policy on Tool Inventory

In its early years Alloy Artifacts was actively engaged in acquiring a large and diverse inventory of tools, spanning many decades of development and representing well over 100 different companies. Having these tools available for study was extremely helpful as we sought to gain a better understanding of the tool industry, especially when it came to tracing the practice of contract production among various companies. We were able to rapidly expand our web pages as more tools were acquired, and in this early phase we often found it useful to reexamine previously catalogued tools for additional details.

As the site matured though, we had fewer and fewer occasions to refer back to the physical tools, and recently we realized that it is no longer necessary to maintain this massive inventory of tools. Accordingly, we have decided that the time has come to sell the tools and let new owners enjoy them, and we plan to carry out this process by making use of one or more experienced EBay sellers (more on this shortly).

We would like to emphasize that this was not at all a "wrenching" decision, as (despite appearances to the contrary) Alloy Artifacts is not an exercise in tool collecting. Our primary area of interest has always been the development of the tool industry in the automobile era, and the tools displayed here have served well to explore this facet of industrial history. But having extracted the history from the tools, we have little further use for them and would like to pass them on to other hands.

The EBay sellers handling the tool inventory liquidation are knowledgeable about tools but are not tool collectors, so there should be no concerns about front-running or conflicts of interest. We will post details in the near future once the first auctions are ready to run.

For our readers interested in acquiring more tools, this will be an exceptional opportunity to expand your collections, as some of the tools here are becoming difficult to find. The sales process will be conducted in an orderly and expeditious manner, but obviously it will take some time to unwind such a large quantity of tools. Therefore, we ask that everyone remain patient while waiting for the tools of interest to be offered. In addition, we ask that you not post any questions here regarding tool sales, as the sales process will be handled entirely by the EBay sellers.

For those readers with no interest in tool sales, the Alloy Artifacts site will remain here as before, with occasional updates as time permits. There are a number of improvements to the site that we'd like to make, especially in the area of support for mobile devices, and we hope to have more time to such projects in the future.