So here's the deal. I've been collecting swords for a few years now. Like one would expect, I started off buying cheap stainless steel wall hangers and such not having any historical knowledge or even historical interest. Over the years, I've become a much more savvy collector and now focus on functional historically based replicas.

I still have pretty much all of the crappy stainless steel wall hangers just sitting around taking up space. I'd like to get at least a little bit of money for them to put towards a new sword. I thought about putting them all together and auctioning them off on ebay or something. But what about a scrap yard? If i stripped them all down to bare blades, I'm roughly estimating I'd have around ten or fifteen pounds of stainless steel. Can anyone tell me how I can unload these things while putting at least little money in my pocket? Thanks.

-JM

Garage Sale :)

Flea market table.

You could try ebay or craigslist, though the former may kill you with fees.
A flea market table or a garage sale may be better though.

It all depends on how fast you want to sell them, how much time you want to invest in the sale and how much of a hit you're willing to take. Selling online has the benefit of just listing the item(s) and sitting back.

This has been discussed here:

http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=14286

Well....my nicer pieces that I consider wall hangers do exactly that, they hang on the wall as decorator items and I rarely (if ever take them down). The nice and/or real pieces that I like to play with, and that I like to share for show and tell, are kept more readily at hand but more out of sight. Ironically I don't worry as much about displaying them...not that many people I know would know the difference (and wall hangers are dull which makes them safer for unsupervised curiosity).

Much less hassle that way.

Don't overlook the educational potential of these pieces. If you haven't already done much tinkering with reproductions, you have a great opportunity to practice making new grips, modifying and refinishing blades, stabilizing and otherwise improving construction, tweaking or radically transforming. Challenge yourself to find something historical in each piece. Better to learn on these than on nicer pieces. When you've done everything you can do to improve a piece, then sell it and profit not only financially but educationally.

One of the pieces in my "in-box" is a cheap Chinese sword with traditional straight, diamond-section blade. It appears to be untempered stainless. Aluminum hilt, secured by nut, softwood grip, etc. Ugly. But it won't take much work to turn it into a better-looking Roman spatha, albeit one with an improperly heat-treated blade (and since nobody's going to cut with this piece, what does that matter?)

I recently sold off all my 'entry-level' stuff to a guy who's kind of into swords, etc., but not enough to really be able to afford the higher end things. Essentially, me about five years ago :) You might be able to find someone like that and get them started on the road to steel addiction.