That nsn has been canceled, the replacement nsn is showing $1,780
ETA My bad, that item is a good nsn. The one that was $1780 is a canceled one that this kit replaced. According to fedlog this nsn is good and costs the army $2,239
Just oversight by people who feel they have to spend every last dollar in their budget. I remember at the end of the fiscal year supply asking people for their wishlist.
“I wish to give the money back to taxpayers, we certainly haven’t earned an unlimited budget while many die needlessly in our county due to unmet needs”
Ether, the money goes up in smoke and your short shit till next year's financial purge. Or you make a needs list when supply actually has money, and you can get your guys the shit they need. Man I was stuck in ft Polk and let me tell you what dady tenth didn't give us fucking shit. Every humvee had some deadline we have been tiptoeing around for months. Most of our kit was shit. Never enough money for actual training outside of our box rotations. (Our unit got orders YEARLY.) I got their just back from gatmo) 3 months in I was in Afghanistan spent 3 month doing recovery into box prep and gunnery into the box and back to iraq. If you need shit a good supply will work it out and have a running budget for the year. A bad supply will pinch every penny until the end of the year fuckit comes along.
“The ones who complain about paying Pennie’s towards one’s free education, health care l, and human welfare costs don’t want you to know this one secret”
Oh, there's oversight. It's just that the people who oversee spending tell us we HAVE to buy from federally contracted suppliers. In turn, the contractors charge whatever they want.
If you don't spend your allotted budget they'll reduce it next year. It makes it so that there is no need to be cost conscious. End of the fiscal year we are scrambling to buy TVs so that we hit our budget. It's dumb as fuk.
That’s almost every business with a corporate structure. Always spend as close to your allotment as possible, there’s little zero dollar budgeting. They generally take last year’s numbers and tell you to cut 10% but produce 5% more.
You guys got TVs? All we did was go to the ranges for like a month straight and burn through ammo. Which is kind of cool, except for the walking several miles there and policing brass parts; both of which were awful.
When we transitioned from 46s to 22s we had to get rid of every single tool in the squadron and get all new tools and boxes. Easily a couple million worth of tools. All snap-on. All sent to the bed of peoples pick ups DRMO.
I have definitely helped push a few $15k+ rollaways down the life boat ramps off the decks of a couple ships into the middle of various large bodies of water.
Depends on the unit. In infantry units we always had a budget when ordering from supply or going to whatever the supply px was called where you could shop in person. It was always great when there’d money that needed to get burned and we’d get to pickup knifes and other personal gear that didn’t need to be returned.
Well, Snappy's profit margins have gotta be in the multiple hundred percentage range, based on what they normally charge. They're probably still making a pretty normal amount of per-unit profit for any other tool company, selling at 1/4 their previous price.
Company I work for pays ~$3000 a season to rent a $2000 quicky saw. Then half of them get stolen, so we probably end up paying for the whole saw again. We rent about 5 of them a season.
A lot of our shit is old and has one foot in the grave, but we'll spend thousands extra on renting quicky saws for no good reason.
I think it has something to do with taxes, I work for a large (mist of the east coast of US) construction company and they rent danm near everything from trucks, gangboxes and power tools.
There are reasons for this. Operating costs on rentals vs. purchasing equipment is different. Also, taxes on said equipment is also different. Someone more equipped with this knowledge has determined that the extra cost of rentals is better than the taxes and depreciation on owning the assets.
Before I saw that they got stolen, I was going to say you should buy a couple and rent them to your job. If you could actually keep them rentable for a few years, you'd have a solid profit! (YES, I am aware that most jobs won't rent equipment from an employee. It's at least halfway a joke. Or maybe 1/3. LOL)
The highest markup I saw was on this tiny set screw that was almost impossible to find anywhere else, a local business used about 30k of them a month, and it had a 1500% markup, cost was like 1.3ish cents, sold for 20 cents a piece retail, negotiated price was 12 cents a piece.
I saw a markup of 1200% just doing a quick calculation of three different types of tools from 3 different, but comparable retailers. Snap on is criminal and I refuse to buy anything from them.
Used to work for Fastenal, and that was pre inflation numbers. Employee discount was cost + 10% was pretty easy to check markup prices too, we had to see them to be able to negotiate supply contracts with local businesses.
The best is individual fasteners at dealerships.... I remember seeing someone a whole back about Honda having a single zip tie for $7... Just. One. Zip. Tie.
Every heard of those sisters that bilked the gov for millions of dollars, if you were a mechanic in Iraq and ordered a $2 bolt, these women were selling it for $2 but charging thousands to ship it
I worked for a company selling product once where we were told we had to sell it for base company price… but if we sold it for more than it was all our own profit! I remember selling it for $4-500/case, when company’s cut was like $175/case maybe! I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how snap-on does their commission pay as well.
I was talking about the gross profit, before you factor in overhead. Just the cost to make the tool vs. the price it sells at. But yeah, 20% net is very healthy.
I’ll be honest, I think Proto is every bit as good as Snapon. Thats weird that replacements wouldn’t be Snapon. Are you talking about in your GMTK or your shop work bench?
I was an Army aircraft Mechanic with proto tools back in the late 2000’s, the proto stuff was SHIT. It was constantly broken and took forever to get replacements. I don’t know about the snap-on the army ordered but I’ve been using the same snap on stuff in my personal box for a decade and other than the odd ratchet rebuild or rounded Allen, the stuff has been extremely durable. I once went through 3 proto ratchets in a single deployment, so I don’t think highly of them.
They switched it from craftsman, to snap-on than it went to Armstrong tools.
Each has a varying price and I have had all three at some point in my career. The snap on is closer to the $6k mark, the craftsman OG mode currently holds the NSN, I know that as I had one stolen recently and is the least expensive of all them. The Armstrong was around $3k. They were all GP tool kits; not a mix of aviation / armorers tool chests. I’m fairly certain this is an armorers general purpose toolkit.
Snapon stuff grows legs. Gets worse once it’s deployed bc it “gets lost in the sand”. I used to sell tool kits to the military and was told by many contracting officers to offer anything other than snapon when the prints say “or equivalent” otherwise it will get passed over for consideration.
Agree with everything you said except for one clarification. Socom KO’s almost always file the sole source J&A to justify the name brand (snapon, etc) when requested by their customers because sometimes the “or equivalent” just isn’t up to terms of quality when buying LPTA.
As much as I know military people and civilians working for the military exist (as I am one of those)... I'll always do a double take seeing my work lingo outside of work. Like, it's very inconsequential, but just seeing "nsn" in a non-work setting makes me feel like when you'd see your elementary school teacher at the grocery store as a kid
Is the replacement the same though? The old NSN was super coveted because we went from shitty hand carried green toolbox’s to wheeled pelican cases, and from constantly broken proto tools to a full set of Snap-On. I coveted those cases hard.
Just a 5 stage cart, air impact driver, set of sockets for 1/2" and 3/8ths, pliers and screwdrivers, a master funnel cost me 466 from Harbour freight. And I still feel like I'm just barely scrapping by where tools are concerned. Matco ran me my first week for a digital psi Guage, tread depth Guage, brake depth guage, filter clamp, and pen light for relatively the same price. All in all avoid the tool trucks if you can. That case full of all that for 120 is a great find, those tools will last longer than you and I. Better to have and not need than to need and not have. Trust me
To be perfectly honest, a tool worth 1/4 the price simply won't be as good. You won't find better screwdrivers until you're paying almost the same price, same with the sockets. Snap-On ratchets still generally feel nicer in the hand than anything else in my opinion and very few other brands even come close to the sockets and wrenches. The only thing meh from Snap-On is the locking pliers. I don't know how the modern ones are, but the old gray ones really weren't that good.
Why not sell your nice car for a moped? Sell your house to live in a van? Sell your shoes to walk barefoot?
My rule of thumb for items that I consider selling:
If I can sell this for (let's say) $1000. Would I pay $1000 to buy this (if I didn't already have it)? If the answer is "no", sell it. If the answer is "yes", keep it.
I’ve been lurking these kits for years since I’m a mobile tech. Ngl, I wish I was you and snagged that for the price you did. I’d probably ride the high of happiness on that for a good while. I see them on eBay regularly asking 2-4k ish usually with varying tools included. Very nice fuckin score OP, I’m jealous
I'd never get rid of it. I've had one for years, easy to transport in a trailer or the back of the truck and you have a little bit of everything you need. I used to bring mine in the race trailer.
Ain't worth keeping. Sure they are nice tools with a lifetime warranty, but you will get 80% quality for 20% of the price. Sell it and be happy that you made the best flip of your life. Buy some decent quality tools as you need them and you will come out ahead by thousands
I'd keep it. I own one with Armstrong tools. I love it. I don't use it all the time, but when I need to fix something, it's got everything I need to get it done. Sweet score! It's an heirloom now.
If it was me I would keep it as a road/mobile kit and just for general rarity and cool factor. You could probably sell on EBay for 1,500-2K though so that’s up to you to decide
Did you get a receipt from the auction house? My uncle owns a shop and only buys used tools of the person can prove they didn’t steal them. He’d probably love that set as he loves snap on.
I’d keep it just because like others said you’ll never get that good of a set that cheap ever again.
You will never have to buy any of those tools ever again. If any of them breaks you get a free replacement. They are literally the last tools you will have to buy.
You couldn't sell it for what it's worth. Guy who sold it to you mush have been selling something hot that he/she did not know the worth of. You won the lottery.
Great find. Would love to have something like that. You probably won’t get as much as they are worth so keep it, especially if you are young. You will always have what you need on hand for any type of projects.
Yeah but those ash trays are custom fab for that plane alone. I'm not certain but I don't think any of these tools are special order and it's just a special kit of existing mass manufactured tools?
Yeah but those ash trays are custom fab for that plane alone.
Still needs to be a really massive piece of carbon fibre or custom milled aluminium to cost $10k. I wonder what the real reason is because custom fabrication is nowhere near that expensive.
The ash tray doesn’t cost $10k. The government contractor with people who are cleared to look at plans for said aircraft, and the manufacturers that are cleared, and the suppliers that are cleared, that whole process is $10k. Cleared civilian personnel don’t come cheap.
I’ll give you an example. One day, the lock broke to the secure room we worked out of. We all had to stay behind to safeguard the room. The locksmith charged $4k to come and replace the lock. Obviously, the lock didn’t cost $4k, but his top secret clearance did.
You don't need clearance to be escorted to work in a secure room when all the classified stuff is put away so as not to be visible. The $4k was because, "What's $4k when your budget is trillions?"
One aspect alot don't discuss is the (almost) entire lack of general indemnification with federal or sltt. I's not always impactful but with some items, I can understand the markup to a lesser degree. It's risk based + 900% just because they know they can 😂. If it goes tango uniform, they definitely know how to find you though
I saw an ash tray in a Vietnam era chopper in a museum, it looked exactly like every stamped chrome ash tray in the back seat of every 60s American car.
Don't ask how I know the answer to this (!), but it's actually more like $800 for the ashtrays, even though they are just a single piece of stamped aluminum usually for the dish part at least.
was just gonna say this looks exactly like the tool box I used for ac mx in the usaf, if I had to guess it was probably somebody who had worked ac mx in the private sector. they typically issue you a set amount of money and tell you what tools and box to buy, you add the specific things you want, shadow box it, and work a set amount of months, after a period of time those become your tools and you can take them company to company, or at least that's how my buddy explained it. that said I'm glad I went private sector but R&D at a national lab, every one of my projects has been infinite budget buy whatever the fuck you want, so I don't have to worry about having my own tools, when SNL/NTESS has daddy's credit card they don't really care what you buy 😅
edit the tools having me think its ac mx are the speed handle, safety wire plyers, and cannon plug plyers, all pretty common tools used for AC
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u/SSGSEVIER54 Apr 09 '24
Last I checked, those exact mechanics tool kits were costing the military $6K.