RE: Pricing stoves . . . and reality checks

I came home yesterday to find one of my wife's friends looking through the state "shopper" -- Uncle Henrys. Once in a while she would stop, pause for a minute and then circle the ad. Finally, I asked her what she was doing and she replied that she was checking out prices on woodstoves since she was planning on selling her woodstove.

Of course this caught my interest so I asked her what brand of stove it was . . . to which she said she didn't know. I then asked her how big the firebox was . . . to which she had no answer. I then asked how old it was . . . this time around she stated that it was about 10 years old.

I stopped asking questions until she started reading an existing ad which stated that the stove was just like new and the advertisers were hoping to get $250. After reading the ad she declared that she thought her stove could also get $250.

Curious, I told her I might be able to give her a bit of an idea of whether her stove was worth that much . . . and so we went back to her house.

I'll cut to the chase here. First off, the stove was built by Crane Stove Works . . . not exactly a Jotul, vintage Vermont Castings or Morso. The date? 1981 . . . which my wife noted made this stove a bit older than "10 years" and more like 27 years old. The entire stove (inside and out) was covered in rust. The door handle and ash clean out door handles were held on with a few nuts that even a blind man could tell were not original to the stove as they were loose and slopping all over the place.

In the end I dashed her hopes by telling her that I told her I suspected she would be lucky to get $25 for the stove and not $250 as she was hoping.

Too bad you can't send it down here. Right now with some paint and new bolts, I could easily get $300 for that stove.

hate to bump such old threads, but this should be answered properly for all those future people who "google" and get linked to this thread for the next 50 years...

The Crane Stove is a rare breed indeed because of one extremely important fact: Its a solid continuous welded stove made of 1/4 inch think steel and is indestructible! No matter how much rust or use a Crane Stove has its bones cannot be killed. The Crane model 44 is arguably the best, easiest to maintain, largest bang for its size and price coal stove ever made in the history of the world. you can literally throw this stove off a sky scraper or sink it at the bottom of a lake for 10 years and with new gasket, liner and glass it will preform the same as it did the day it was purchased new! The value after spending $25.00 for a can of stove paint, 6' of gasket and a piece of 4" glass would most certainly be $300 at the very least! If you had a model 404 it would far more... Sincerely Doug Crane

That's funny. I assume Doug is related to the Crane Woodstove Co., and rightfully proud of his product. Jake, what happened to the stove?

Thanks Begreen, yes Crane Stoves was my dads company, Im trying to enlighten and answer some questions that come up on google (your forum only had a couple, but i will try to help answer questions that seemingly come to me easy), i never realized how much i learned growing up in the coal/woodburning stove industry (i went into realestate long ago when i really should have stuck with my roots). I will request a mod inject any answers or fixes on old threads from now on so they wont get bumped. thanks guys!

LOL, If i still had some of the prototypes we had to test you would laugh... yes we always had a warm house for sure and ive used more stoves then i could possibly remember including all the competitions of the day. Maybe ill start a thread called "The teenage idiot... growing up in a stove company" HaHaHa

What a cool (okay hot) heritage.

Ok, that settles it... I will make a thread of my days growing up with some pictures of the dealer trips, home shows, and company parties i grew up with on a weekly basis (at the time i was just a pot smokin' teen who didn't appreciate all his father was and did... but upon growing up realize how lucky i really was). give me a few days to get some old pics that you folks may get a kick out of.

This sounds interesting. Doug, please chime in on this thread and let us know when you start the other one.

I googled your fathers stoves and they seem to be built like tanks! I look forward to the thread as well!