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This manual Hardinge turret lathe sold for more than $14,000

Spud

Diamond
Joined
Jan 12, 2006
Location
Brookfield, Wisconsin
Wonder if there was a baby T-Rex skull inside the cabinet...that very few knew about.

This has to be a record for a manual Hardinge turret lathe. $14,000 with 4minutes and 33 seconds left. Sold in Illinois in August of 2020.


 
Is that an ESM-59? It has a split bed I think....did someone make a typo and add a zero?
 
I found one on EVIL BAY for about $6,000.00 in Southern CA in the valley somewhere...Apple Valley I think?.I'm not going to get it,but...I suspect that its too far away and you probably wouldn't either.
 
It's hard to tell. Based on the information in the picture I was able to find the actual listing. Nothing to be revealed by the pictures or description.
The auction was for the liquidation of the Trio Secondary Swiss Inc. I don't have the time to spend searching what they were manufacturing. The only rational explanation I have for the hammer price is that somebody was likely interested in continuing a line of production for which this (and likely other) lathe was set up for.

Paolo
 
Well these lathes are very handy yet that price is very very high it seems. Amazing actually if one can sell it for that price. I would not feel bad that someone needed it more than money they had taking up space.
 
look at the leg on the bed it is round the ones of the era have a squarish leg the ones with the square the round leg ones are rare. and it might have sold for so much because it could have the thread chasing attachment
 
That price is not a typo, I was following the auction. The price you see was progressively bid up to that point. I didn't pay attention till the end, so no idea what it finally sold for.
 
For what it's worth, when I bought my DV-/DSM-59, I paid $2000-$2500 (more than a decade ago, I can't recall the precise figure now) because it came with pretty much the complete set of components for both the DV and the DSM configurations plus a significant amount of tooling. That was not a bargain price, but I didn't think it was out of line for a machine I could put to work almost immediately. I am sure that somebody will step up and say I shouldn't have paid more than $500 for it. So be it.

But $14,000 for a machine that's decades older and apparently untooled? That's just nuts.
 
Wonder does the $14k include the 18% buyers premium?? Or is that another $2520 on top of it?


Does not include Buyer's Premium or Sales Tax. Also don't know what the hammer price was, as it was $14K with a few minutes left, so it could have gone up even more.
 
Not sure how "rare" but older. Round leg and hex turret indicate that. If we had the serial number, Larry could tell us it's age, day it was made, and if it was first or second shift.

I can tell this much... The lathe is model EL if sold with a slide rest and tailstock. They probably had a different name if sold with lever cross slide and turret, but I have no brochure for that version. The round bed enclosed headstock lathes were introduced about 1935 and carried the Cataract trade name on a brass plate on the bed. They were sold with a choice of wooden desk-like cabinet or wood top bench with steel pipe legs. Near as I can tell, the Cataract round bed was replaced with the new TR and ESM models with skirted bed and square foot in 1940. The new models no longer used the Cataract name and came on either the wood top bench with steel pipe legs or an all steel cabinet.

So, a round bed lathe on a steel cabinet is a rare item, probably the last of the round beds and the first of the steel cabinets and made around 1939. Rare does not equate to valuable. Hardinge did not come out with new models just for fun. Their new models have obvious improvements. My second Hardinge lathe was a 1936 EL-59 and I spent a ridiculous amount of effort rebuilding it. I was delighted a few years later to replace it with a late 1944 TR-59, which I rebuilt and still use after 40 years.

Larry
 








 
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