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I Got An Anvil, I Got An Anvil, Na-Na-Na-Na-Boo-Boo


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I bid on an anvil at a local online auction sight. It looked like a decent one, I could tell it needed some TLC and a lot of work. I didn't know the weight but judging from the size of the other items in the pictures I could tell it was a good sized one. I was hoping it would be at least a 100lbs'er. I bid up to $270, but won at $260. With a 10% buyer's fee it ended being $286 total.
 
Well, I was very surprised by what I found. I put it on the bathroom scale when I got home with it and it weighed out at 152lbs (the hundred weight marks say it was 155lbs originally)! I was happy by that point. Then I got to looking at it a little closer, turns out its a Peter Wright! Ecstatic! It does need work, more than I thought actually, but the rebound is great and it rings like a xxxxxxx bell. The edges are pretty torn up, one side has a chunk broken off and another piece cracked. The face is mostly smooth with a few pits, but its flat as a granite slab, no swayback. The horn and face both have what looks like a bit welding slag on them, but a grinder will take care of that quickly. I hit it with a cupped wire wheel on my angle grinder and cleaned it up, which it did pretty nicely. I'll hit it with a straight wheel later and see if it'll clean up more. I also popped that socket out quite easily by heating it up nice and hot and beating the xxxx out of it from the bottom.
 
I haven't found a date on it anywhere, but there is a number 3 stamped on one of the legs. I did find some markings that I thought might be a date stamp, the middle character looks like a 4, but there are what appear to be two 1s on either side of it, I highly doubt its a circa 1141 or 1411. The  folks on a couple Facebook blacksmithing groups have guesstimated it to be roughly pre-1850's. One gentleman speculated that it looked like a multi-piece anvil that PW stopped making in the 1850's.
 
Oh, time for the math, $286 / 152# = $1.88 per pound! That's a heck of a deal around here. People want $400-$800 for no-name anvils, weighing less, and sometimes in worse shape.
 
Questions,
A. What's your guess on the age?
B. Can you give me ballpark value?
3. The feet are a little steeper than I usually see, what's the best way to anchor one like this?
 
Well here are the gratuitous pictures, there are a lot of them, just to warn you.
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Congratulations

Question B can only you answer, or maybe in hopefully distant future you heirs.

Not grinding the anvil is one thing, but I think its safe to say that you can remove those 2 welding spots 

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Value? Currently $286. It is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

Don't worry about making it look new, just use it. Dress the edges with a grinder to smooth them up, and to decrease the chances of further chipping. If they need more than a light dressing, work around the really bad sections. Plenty of good room to work on that face.

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