How to sell or donate Mom's old leather tools

[Michelle M]

Hello - I'm in the process of downsizing the family home and I've come across hundreds of my mother's old Tandy leather stamping and embossing tools.   They're all in excellent condition and I'd hate to just throw them all out, but I have no use for them.   Does anyone have any ideas on how to sell or even donate them?   Thank you for your help. 

Michelle Matthews

 

Edited Wednesday at 03:11 PM by Northmount
Updated title to reflect content

[fredk]

@Michelle M

First option; list them on here in the 'For Sale' section

I guess a lot of ppl on here might want to buy them

btw, put your location in your profile. This is an international forum with members all over the world

[bruce johnson]

Michelle,
    I deal in leather tools and come across this situation more often than not.

     You can sell them through the market place here. Ebay is another option, some people have good luck on FaceBook marketplace too. There are also FaceBook groups dedicated to just selling leather tools. If you want to get them moved as a group and sell them, these are all viable options. Problem with all this is taking pictures, dealing with the selling process and collecting payment, then shipment. Oh yeah and figuring a price first. 

      Pricing - There is a lot of smoke and advice from people who have never done this. I tried Craftool stamps early on with my website. There was too much time in pictures and descriptions for singles to make it worth the time. Put them in small groups by type and you get five questions about "I just want that one, not the other 4". We evolved to just selling them on a bargain table at the shows. In about the last 5 years I have all but stopped intentionally buying just Craftools for resale. Still with estate sets I end up with 500-700 Craftool stamps a year, plus the hand tools and patterns. Contrary to popular belief, older Craftools do not necessarily sell better than newer ones to most people. Maybe a single stamp or small group here and there, but overall - no. For the shows, I used to price the preletter Craftool stamps at $7 and letter prefix stamps at $5. I spent a lot of time at the shows explaining the difference to people who in the end just didn't care. They either liked the stamp or they didn't and tried to deal down on the $7 price anyway. Now all stamps are $5 each and Ms Rundi will deal them at 5 for $20. The hand tools are usually on the bottom end too - lot of $5 tools and they are still piling up here. Patterns and books depend. Some are pretty much outdated styles and projects. Some are good like the Baird books, some are fire-starters like bowling ball bag patterns. Likewise with Craft-Aids - a few good ones, more though that we bundle and hope. 

    What do we do now? We take them to the shows and reliably the Prescott AZ show is our better one for them. We found they sell decently at Prescott, barely sell at Sheridan, do just Ok at the Pendleton show. Overall we end up and sell maybe half the stamps at best. Now Maker's Leather Supply is set up across from us at the Prescott show. They are great about having kid's project kits they give away. The kids get a free kit and then Janie Sue sends them across the way to us. They get to pick out up to 5 stamps for free. Mallets are free too if we have any. The cool thing about Prescott also is there is a guy who has a leather craft program at the VA facility. He gets whatever he asks for and more. There are a few kids whose parents take classes or are venders at the shows. I have a loosely structured informal program with free roaming kids. They help empty my candy dish, I give them a deal on a few tools for part of their pocket cash. Later on they trade up to something they like better, or sell stuff back (at a profit for them). It keeps them occupied throughout the show and learning cowboy bartering skills. 

My experience anyway 

[Cumberland Highpower]

24 minutes ago, bruce johnson said:

Michelle,
    I deal in leather tools and come across this situation more often than not.

     You can sell them through the market place here. Ebay is another option, some people have good luck on FaceBook marketplace too. There are also FaceBook groups dedicated to just selling leather tools. If you want to get them moved as a group and sell them, these are all viable options. Problem with all this is taking pictures, dealing with the selling process and collecting payment, then shipment. Oh yeah and figuring a price first. 

      Pricing - There is a lot of smoke and advice from people who have never done this. I tried Craftool stamps early on with my website. There was too much time in pictures and descriptions for singles to make it worth the time. Put them in small groups by type and you get five questions about "I just want that one, not the other 4". We evolved to just selling them on a bargain table at the shows. In about the last 5 years I have all but stopped intentionally buying just Craftools for resale. Still with estate sets I end up with 500-700 Craftool stamps a year, plus the hand tools and patterns. Contrary to popular belief, older Craftools do not necessarily sell better than newer ones to most people. Maybe a single stamp or small group here and there, but overall - no. For the shows, I used to price the preletter Craftool stamps at $7 and letter prefix stamps at $5. I spent a lot of time at the shows explaining the difference to people who in the end just didn't care. They either liked the stamp or they didn't and tried to deal down on the $7 price anyway. Now all stamps are $5 each and Ms Rundi will deal them at 5 for $20. The hand tools are usually on the bottom end too - lot of $5 tools and they are still piling up here. Patterns and books depend. Some are pretty much outdated styles and projects. Some are good like the Baird books, some are fire-starters like bowling ball bag patterns. Likewise with Craft-Aids - a few good ones, more though that we bundle and hope. 

    What do we do now? We take them to the shows and reliably the Prescott AZ show is our better one for them. We found they sell decently at Prescott, barely sell at Sheridan, do just Ok at the Pendleton show. Overall we end up and sell maybe half the stamps at best. Now Maker's Leather Supply is set up across from us at the Prescott show. They are great about having kid's project kits they give away. The kids get a free kit and then Janie Sue sends them across the way to us. They get to pick out up to 5 stamps for free. Mallets are free too if we have any. The cool thing about Prescott also is there is a guy who has a leather craft program at the VA facility. He gets whatever he asks for and more. There are a few kids whose parents take classes or are venders at the shows. I have a loosely structured informal program with free roaming kids. They help empty my candy dish, I give them a deal on a few tools for part of their pocket cash. Later on they trade up to something they like better, or sell stuff back (at a profit for them). It keeps them occupied throughout the show and learning cowboy bartering skills. 

My experience anyway 

Somewhat unrelated to the question at hand, but I'm curious what shows/types of show you attend?  

 

 

[bruce johnson]

2 hours ago, Cumberland Highpower said:

Somewhat unrelated to the question at hand, but I'm curious what shows/types of show you attend?  

 

 

Leather trade shows - we set up as venders at  Prescott Az, Sheridan WY, Pendleton OR, and new show in Las Vegas next January. We are going to miss Waco this year but on the radar for next year. 

[chuck123wapati]

Also dont throw away the patterns or books they can be worth as much or more than the tools.

[AEBL]

@bruce johnson, what's the contact info for the VA guy who might want tools? That's something I could probably help out a tiny bit with.

[bruce johnson]

1 hour ago, AEBL said:

@bruce johnson, what's the contact info for the VA guy who might want tools? That's something I could probably help out a tiny bit with.

I'll see if I can dig up his name, He just shows up at the show and I recognize him.

[AEBL]

Thanks Bruce