2nd hand machinery and tooling price in the USA, am I missing something?

Afternoon ya'll!

I am not sure if this is the correct place for this thread. I was just watching a YouTube video about an auction of a machine shop closure in Florida on Adam Booth's YouTube channel(abom79) today and was shocked by the pricing of everything. Wow, speechless, shocked, sick in guts was the order of my emotions. A lot of the items seemed give away prices. The small lathes $850, vertical mills $500 and most looked in good nick and way better than the machines I bought here. A whole pallet shelving unit for $600 I think. The scrap price must be worth more than that. I assume purchaser has to dissemble it too.

I have a colchester 1960s? master mark 2 for USD1800 and an Adcock Shipley Bridgeport for USD5000 landed from South Africa. (CP R45000 15mths ago)

Most machinery I have seen for sale in Zim is really beaten up and most bigger lathes +1.5m beds going for USD3000 and upwards. Mills I wouldn't touch they are really bad. Only one I have seen in really good condition was a Bridgeport for $8000 USD. I don't own an engineering business but if I was wanting to set up a business, no brainer to get consumables and cheap good machines and set up shop. Granted you got to have clients, etc. I would love to know what the CNCs sold for. The big CNC guy went for $15k!

Obviously I am missing something. Nasst55 how does that compare to SA second hand market? Is there not really a demand for manual machines in the states other than mom and pop back yard businesses and home machinists and hobbyist?

My wife wants us to move back to the states if things go pear shape here, so going to give it a couple more years first. My idea was to set up a machine shop, farm some land and learn CNC and start making parts, looks like that might end up being my hobby now.

What a shame such a huge business went under. Out of curiosity would like to know the reason why it went to auction vs piece meal selling or is the market not there?

Greg

Appears to be the opposite issue with machinery up here. Clapped out lathes, dealers asking $9000 for a 14” x 30” size machine. Auction in January, small Chevalier SG’s going for $14,000 plus 18% buyer’s premium. 8” milling vise, $1200 + 18%, gentleman bidding was bragging that was a steal for a $5000 vise. I pulled up the exact same vise on Sowa’s website and showed it to my partner, $1350 new.

I don’t know if it’s just general ignorance on buyer’s part or dilusional sellers up here. I’m all for paying fair market value but even that is hard to come by lately.

IMO, very dependent on time and location. In the past we've had a lot of manufacturers go out of business, with equipment selling for very little at auction. Much of that is over and prices are going up... expect for some areas where they remain depressed and other areas where they never dropped. Very few places need the big equipment anymore, save for oil areas.

RC Mech said:

Appears to be the opposite issue with machinery up here. Clapped out lathes, dealers asking $9000 for a 14” x 30” size machine. Auction in January, small Chevalier SG’s going for $14,000 plus 18% buyer’s premium. 8” milling vise, $1200 + 18%, gentleman bidding was bragging that was a steal for a $5000 vise. I pulled up the exact same vise on Sowa’s website and showed it to my partner, $1350 new.

I don’t know if it’s just general ignorance on buyer’s part or dilusional sellers up here. I’m all for paying fair market value but even that is hard to come by lately.

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Ya, auctions here seem to be a waste of time. Old clapped out shit for better than top dollar.

As they say in the real estate business, "location, location, location". When you factor in the costs of shipping used machinery and any added costs of moving it across an international border, the prices become very local.

Even in the US, things can vary a lot. When I purchased my lathe I was in southern Iowa. I searched for a year and paid close to two times what a similar machine in another US location would go for. And I had to travel across two states to pick it up. The seller brought it across another state and a half to help save the shipping costs. Nice guy.

There weren't a lot of lathes for sale in that area, in that state, or even in the surrounding ones. Supply and demand. In that area demand may have been low, but it probably, easily outstripped the demand. In some areas it is easy to find old machines just sitting outside of a shop, RUSTING AWAY. In others, sellers get a premium price.

Here in the uk prices have been on the rise for a while, nothing vast, but definitely up. Smaller home shop stuff can get pretty good prices, go bigger - go industrial size though and prices noticeably drop a bit.

And @Zimbo - there's a huge difference in industrial products between north america (very heavily industrialized) and Africa (though of course "Africa" is a very large area and conditions are quite variable.

I noticed that here in the US when I was searching for my lathe. A used lathe that would be at home in a home garage or shed or basement would often cost more than a 16" or 24" industrial sized used lathe. The buyers for the larger machines often wanted a new machine, not a project. Really big ones often went completely unsold at any price. Supply and demand.

adama said:

Here in the uk prices have been on the rise for a while, nothing vast, but definitely up. Smaller home shop stuff can get pretty good prices, go bigger - go industrial size though and prices noticeably drop a bit.

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It is very much luck of the draw. I have been to auctions in the same city, days appart. Good equipment at one brought nothing, the other top dollar and was worn out.

It is like Mebfab said, luck of the draw.
BUT what makes used machinery increase drastically is the Rand to Dollar rate. If it goes up then it is not often viable to import new machinery right away because you could be saving quite a bit when it drops. So some dealers (AKA SHARKS) increase the prices on their used equipment because there is more demand for it. Then even when a private guy wants to sell his machinery the first thing he does is look at what the sharks are asking for similar machines and prices his equipment that way. So it drives the whole market up.

When the economy does badly, like it has been for a few years, loads of places shut down and some of those sharks buy the equipment up, do a spray job, and flog it off at a crazy mark up. If you are in the game, like we are, then used machines can be picked up at decent prices, repaired and sold off.

We generally never used to just flip machines but some guys insist that we leave them as is so they can refurbish it themselves. They aren't too bothered with the guarantee we give on used machines, we are the only one's here that give any form of backup to used machines, so they take it as is. Unfortunately when that happens we hardly ever make money off it because of rigging costs and "storage" for the period that we have had it... but we rather sell it for the same that we got it than get a shitty name.

99% of used machinery dealers I have come across in SA are real Dicks. If something happens to a clients machine they don't give a shit. We often get calls from companies that need machines repaired that bought from one of them thinking that it was refurbished but all that happened was it was sprayed to make it look "pretty" and flogged. As long as they get their money they don't care... and don't get me started on those idiots that sell machinery off to a poor customer promising that it can do something and it cannot either because they have NO EXPERIENCE when it comes to machine tools and just sell for a few years to make a quick buck or they don't give a shit.

bryan_machine said:

And @Zimbo - there's a huge difference in industrial products between north america (very heavily industrialized) and Africa (though of course "Africa" is a very large area and conditions are quite variable.

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The top 20 silly questions that foreigners ask South Africans

oh I get it - then again, something like 40% of americans own guns, why wouldn't south africans?, Slavery was legal in some parts of Africa until well into the 20th century, South Africa is remembered for apartheid, and substantial numbers of people visit Africa (the continent) to see Lions and Elephants.
sure, some of those questions are like asking a Texan if they have ever slept in an igloos are a real thing, albeit from rather far away on the same continent.\

but of course Zimbo lists a location of Zimbabwe, which is a different country than South Africa....

on the other hand, I have long association with a group running a factory in Kenya to build clean cookstoves, and have seen the issues with machinery rather directly. it is uneven - things like kaeser compressors and medium to large forklifts are directly available locally. all manner of other things have to be imported.

for example as of a few month ago, they were still buying drills from a supplier in Seattle metro (same supplier I use) - because there no industrial suppliers of drills in all of Kenya, at least that can be found. (you could but drills, but only in sets - period. if you want say 400 #24 drills you had to import them.)

NAST555 said:

The top 20 silly questions that foreigners ask South Africans

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How true. I was bombarded with questions like that when I first moved to the states. A joke I would play on different loan officers was that I wanted to apply for some African American programs as I was born in Africa and was an American thanks to my father, all said with a serious face. The PC would kick in and most folks wouldn't know how to respond and where to look!

When I realized the Myford super 7 I had bought when most folks 1st started leaving Zim in 2001/2 was not upto par with the kind of work I was wanting to do. I had contacted a few "Sharks/ Tsotsies" in SA thanks to Gumtree, similar to CL in the states. It was too much bird dogging to find the gems and then get someone to go and run the machine, tractor etc or take a flight down to check it out.
Nasst555, wish I had known about your company back then. Drop me an email pls as I have a few questions about the Mark 2 you currently working on.

There was a machine shop store in Richmond, VA I visited on a trip several years back and picked up a few things. My luggage was the limiting factor. They used to sell tools by the bucket load for like $10-$20 and had loads of older machines. The guy mentioned a chap from Nigeria used to come to the East coast once a year and buy up containers of machine tools and machinery.

There is a used machine dealer in MN I know... said 80% of his business is export of manual machines.

Yep, saw the same video. I've been looking for a mill for a while (Toronto Ontario area) and was eating me to see what those machines were going for

Ive been to a few auctions where the larger stuff goes for scrap prices.
Economy related,if there is no market at the time for the tools no one will buy.

Soon all the great old girls and good deals will be gone..

Hendey Lathe - tools - by owner - sale

IN Abom's video the small machines and tool lots seemed to be going cheap but there were larger numbers (I gathered from listening) on larger machines. That large manual Mazak lathe seemed to be in the $15K range when it sold, and likewise some of the CNC stuff, which would be decent numbers for older well used CNC machines. The Bullard went cheap I think but really, what commercial enterprise would need such an ancient manual machine, and it's not appropriate for the home shop unless your hobby is full sized locomotives. I guess the Pensacola area is a bit off the beaten path of American manufacturing and it was definitely a buyers market but it didn't seem terrible.

michiganbuck said:

Soon all the great old girls and good deals will be gone..

Hendey Lathe - tools - by owner - sale

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How come the micrometer carriage stop is always the first item to disappear?

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The machine sits on castors so it can be easily moved around your shop.

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The micrometer carriage stop got knocked off while the lathe was being rolled around the shop.

jack vines