I recently bought a Stanley Bailey No. 4C type 14 smoothing plane, from the mid-1920s, made in America.

A 1902 Stanley catalog lists this plane as at $2.20. Using a government propaganda CPI calculator, that probably means someone paid around $3.50 for it when they bought it. That same calculator tells me that translates to about $70 today, which is a little more than I paid for it in an antique store.

The plane is still fully functional, and cuts like a beauty without me even tuning it yet. There were a few flecks of white paint on the handle that I had to scrape off. That’s all I’ve done to it.

Obviously someone took very good care of it. But it blows my mind that this thing has essentially hung onto its value as a tool for nearly a hundred years.

Now, budgeting for selection bias, how many tools can you buy today that will be able to do the same thing? What proportion of Amazonslop “goods” will be able to stand the test of time like this? Is a hunk of Chinesium really “cheaper” if the sticker price is lower than a higher priced American made tool, yet I have to replace it every few years?