each tool. Adams and Gehring write descriptive copy, the details for which can be challenging for hard-to-identify items. They then create two high-quality catalogs, one for each business. The catalogs are printed and mailed to 2,000 subscribers, some of whom live overseas. The Brown Tool Auctions catalog is a semi-annual publication, while The Fine Tool Journal comes out quarterly. Each contains photos and descriptions of 700 to 800 lots; some lots contain a single item, while some are a group of related items. The Fine Tool Journal also publishes articles about antique tools and the craftsmen who invented them. The Summer 2016 issue, for example, includes a fascinating article about innovations to create carnage during the Civil War, such as the Gatling gun and land mines, as well as improvements in hand-held surgical instruments that, though crude by today’s standards, enabled field physicians to tend to the wounded with greater care and compassion.
The Fine Tool Journal is also the presentation venue for the company’s annual photo contest, for which people offer pictures and stories about their best or most interesting tool. The auctions held by Brown Tool Auctions are live events that Gehring describes as “exciting” and “a social thing because everybody knows everybody.” Brown Tool Auctions holds three a year: in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, at the end of March and October and in York, Pennsylvania, at the end of January, in conjunction with an annual tool meet hosted by the Mid-West Tool Collectors Association. Gehring and his staff provide an absentee bidding service for those unable to attend in person. Since 2014, the businesses have brought items to a mid-July farm auction at Tillers International, in Scotts, at which tools and implements related to blacksmithing, farriering and animal-drawn agricultural methods are sold. The Fine Tool Journal auctions are exclusively absentee, with all bids accepted by mail, telephone or email or through the company’s website. This format generates a flurry of activity for Gehring and his staff. Bidders
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