TIL that those old school steel lathe chucks from the 1940s are worth a small fortune now

I was cleaning out my uncle's garage in Toledo last weekend and found this beat up old South Bend 9 inch chuck under a pile of rags. Turns out after I looked it up, a guy on Practical Machinist said collectors are paying over $500 for a clean one because of the hardened jaws and the way they used to grind them by hand. Made me think about how much skill went into making parts back then compared to just punching code into a modern machine. Has anyone else stumbled across old tooling that turned out to be worth serious money?

2 comments

2 Comments

simonp471mo ago

My uncle's old wood lathe chuck turned out to be worth about the same as a decent used car, but it took me two years to find a buyer who didn't think I was crazy. That $500 collectible is now sitting in my shed again because nobody wants to pay shipping for a sixty-pound hunk of forged steel. Apparently my financial instincts are as good as my garage organization skills.

tyler61mo ago

Listed mine on a niche tool forum and got bite in a week.