First of all I would like to begin by thanking everyone who has supported Vintage Resurrection. I started Vintage Resurrection a little over a year ago. Even with the looming effects of the pandemic Vintage Resurrection has slowly grown, faster than I ever expected.
As someone with no previous experience in owning a business or ever having anything to do with building a Registered Nurse in a Cardiac Surgical Intensive Care Unit. Unfortunately an unexpected back injury put an end to my career in 2011.
Over the next few years while waiting for excruciatingly slow process of workman’s compensation to run its course, I rekindled my interest in woodworking as a means to preserve my sanity from the never ending days of nothing to do and the physical ability to do much else.
From small projects around my own home I was soon doing small projects for friends and neighbors.
As my projects grew so did the number of tools I was buying. It didn’t take me long to realize my preference for the old vintage hand tools. Well it wasn’t long after that i discovered I enjoyed buying, restoring and using the old tools as I did woodworking itself.
Before I knew it I found myself with more tools than I could ever need, so I decided to sell a few tools that I had multiples of. At first it was just one or two tools here and there on sites such as Ebay. One day I decided to go to a community yard sale and try sell some tools.
To say I was surprised by the response would be an understatement. What was even more surprising to me was the number of people who continued to call me, long after the event, looking for specific tools.
So I bought and restored more tools and went on to a few more swap meets. Time and again continually surprised at the amount of interest in old vintage tools.
It was at one of these events that I was fortunate enough to meet an older gentleman who apparently had been collecting old vintage tools for the previous 50 years, who was obviously very knowledgeable . Lucky for me I was smart enough to get his number.
Then the Pandemic hit, which meant no more swap meets. I still had a few people calling every now and then. Once again I found myself with nothing to do, sitting around watching TV. Then one day while watching Youtube I came across a “website building” video. Then i watched another and another. Slowly I got the idea of building me own website. now not having had any precious computer skills it took me about 3 months before it was ready to launch. I know I could have paid someone to do that but I just didn’t have that kind of money.
Within just a few weeks of going online I discovered I was starting to sell tools faster than I could restore them. I was running out of tools.
Then I remembered the older gentleman from the swap meet. So I called him up to see if he could direct me to where I could get more inventory. At that point he informed me he had some tools he might be willing to sell and invited me over to take a look. I didn’t know it yet but things were about to change drastically.
Walking into his house was like a kid walking into a candy store for me. He had all types of tools everywhere. So began my journey.
I obviously couldn’t buy everything at once nor was he willing to part with it at that time. However I was able to buy enough of a variety of tools to satisfy my needs for the time being.
Over the course of the next few months I was able to go back a few times and purchase more tools.
Unfortunately the pandemic also took a toll on his health and he decided to part with the rest of his collection. I was honored to be given the first opportunity to buy more of his collection. Given this was the last chance to buy such a well taken care of and amazing collection I bit the bullet and bought it all.
Just last week I was contacted by someone via my website asking if I would be interested in buying a collection of wooden molding planes. There is roughly 600 planes. I couldn’t resist, so I bought that collection too. I’ve not yet had the opportunity to go through each box yet, but they all seem to be in excellent condition and most seem to be from the late 1700’s to late 1800’s. I have rabbet planes, fillister planes, coffin planes, jointer planes etc etc.
I now have literally thousands of tools that I have to inventory, catalog, and load to my website. I have woodworking and carpentry tools, blacksmiths tools, engineering tools, surveying tools, mechanics tools (including MAC and Snap-On tools and tools boxes), and machinists tools. This will take me some time no doubt.
So please contact me if you are looking for anything specific, chances are I have it.
I will try to follow up with weekly updates on the tools. Also now that swap meets are up and running again I am thinking about attending a few which I will also provide updates on the Events & Venues page on my website.
Till next time, happy tooling.
Giuseppe Costa
Vintage Resurrection
