Sweetheart Era

[mosthumbleone]

I finally got around to cleaning up the 60 1/2 I purchased ($21 delivered) and was unexpectedly pleased to find the sweetheart stamp on the blade. I also picked up a sweetheart jack on ebay this week ($30 delivered....help, I'm slipping and I can't get up!). I was actually bidding on 4 different #5s that all finished in a 10 minute period and was hoping to get one for a good price and ended up with one of the sweethearts. I normally wouldn't even bid on the sweetheart planes because they usually fetch more than I'm willing to pay, but I got lucky I reckon. Thus my question, what is the big deal with the sweetheart era? Why are they more collectable? Is the steel in the blade better, or what?

[deathwish2]

It dates them to the time when Stanley was at the top of their game. Both in the quality of the tools and the steel in the blades . . . also, if it is clean looking and still has the SW blade in it, it wasn't something getting battered around in a tool kit for 10-20+ years seeing daily use, and is likely still pretty usable.

That said, I have some stanley goods from during that era, at least one from before, and some from after . . . I've got all of them tuned to work great.