This is old News and relates to the first stage of development, we have upgraded and added a new improved bidding system and some old content will have less relevance.
Hi Everyone, What a winter it’s been!
Where should I start? well, we suffered from the Delta variant back in early October, transmitting it from one person to another in our home. Ten Day’s Isolation was enforced upon us and if it wasn’t for the woolly head it gave us I’m sure I’d have been crawling up the walls. Luckily Brandon seemed to avoid it and managed to keep things ticking in Tooltique covering the daily orders. So as you can imagine we were so far behind with things and the production needed, it took a few weeks before we started catching up with the workload. We probably lost a month in total, especially with restrictions being enforced somewhat before Christmas.
So as you would expect before Christmas we didn’t get out much to see the people who contacted us but a fair amount of tools came in on their own accord from those who were happy to venture out into the unknown.
The telephone was busy and we have been talking to a few collectors who are looking to sell their tool collections and one particular stood out worthy of an auction in its own right.
I’ve been fascinated over the past few years by how specific types of tools have attracted more interest. From saws, wrenches, rules, and hammers to name but a few. Many of these subjects have become equally important as the makers that attracted their own collectors such as Preston, Spiers, and Norris for example.
So for our next tool auction, we are dedicating this one to Hammers! Loads of them, with some absolute gems that are rarely seen today or indeed survive in many cases. Lots of hammers will be sold individually and many will be sold in lots with groups of them by theme, type, uses, along with random mixtures for buyers to root through to find any unknown Gems.
What we learned from September’s Auction.
There is no substitute for experience and what we found after our first auction was the heavy demand the activity placed on our server. This explains why we restricted our first auction to paid members only. it was very much a test for the auction system we are building. It worked fine but could be better and it needed meaningful surgery that will aid our ability to add more capabilities for the user.
What it showed us was we had to go back to the drawing board and look for solutions that would improve the user experience and our ability to improve the auction system further in the future. So the past few months have also involved lots of development work on this website, hence why I’ve not had the time needed to add more content on a regular basis. I’ll be happy when things finally get built to a standard that embraces the latest technologies but these things take time if they are to be done correctly.
We expect our tool auctions to become busier in the near future and will be adding easier access to bidding, memberships will always define the buyer’s premium and any free accounts will naturally pay a higher rate than those who choose to join as upgraded members with reduced fees.
So what date is our next tool auction?
As I said we did lose some time and have been pushing hard to get things ready for the advertised Month of March, however, three things have made us realise April would be a better month. Firstly it gives us a little longer to test the new improved auction system and to spend the time needed to organise this huge hammer collection we have here for the next auction. The third reason is that my son Brandon hasn’t had any time off over the past two years, he asked me to delay the tool auction because he wanted a few days off to go to an event he’d seen, which given his dedication to everything good that’s going on here it’s the least we can do.
So with that in mind, we have chosen the week after Easter starting Thursday 21st and finishing the 24th of April 2022.