We will be selling an antique sausage stuffer. It is about 15' long and 4" in diameter with a wooden plunger to push the sausage meat into the casing. I think we bought it on Ebay several years ago and have no idea what we paid for it. Of course, as any investor knows, what we paid doesn't matter now. It's what it's worth today.
The first step determining it's value is to go to Ebay and run a search for sausage stuffer. That returns 204 items many of which are new. Looking at the first page of results I see I need to adjust my search with some negative keywords. For example, the search string is sausage stuffer -new -bag -electric thined the results down some. Eventually there were so few results that Ebay automatically started showing store listings.
That's where I found "Rare VTG Tin Sausage Stuffer With Original Wood Mallet listed for $29.99 plus $19.20 shipping. It is a Buy It Now or Best Offer. Since the seller has an Ebay shop and by his user name looks like he is in the antique business, I would guess his item could be purchased for 25% off at least.
Our sausage stuffer is in better condition. The one listed was found in a barn, and the tube the sausage casing slides over is rusted through and the mallet has a sizable chip missing. In addition, the listed stuffer is made in one piece. Ours has a twist off bottom for easy cleaning and there are two bands of copper to provide strength. The other seller says his mallet is made of oak. I really question that. I think ours is maple or some other hardwood because it is very heavy with a tight grain.
The patina on the mallet handle and the soldered repair of the twist on/off flanges indicates our sausage stuffer was well used.
Pictures are coming.
Even though I only found one sausage stuffer that matched my I am comfortable with the identification. It would have been nice if the other seller was able to provide details that would help age the stuffer.
I collect old hardware catalogs. I looked at several from the late 1920's and, while they all sold sausage stuffers, they were more advanced than this one. Thus I am confident this sausage stuffer dates from at least the early part of the 1900's. Maybe 1900 to 1920 would be a good range.
If I am going to sell this item at auction I need to determine a value I feel comfortable with. In this case I think the other seller is probably right on the money; or perhaps a little high. I assume that if it sits in his store for to long he will lower the price and/or auction it with a lower starting price. It doesn't have enough value to justify spending a lot more time on research. If I thought there was a chance it had a much higher value I would research completed auctions using Terapeak.
