Options for my First Anvil

[Jacques d'Argent]

Hello, all!
I am just getting into blacksmithing and by pure chance ran into these forums. For quite a while now I have been looking for what would be my first anvil (after the usual piece of rail track), unfortunately, they're quite hard to come by in my city and the ones I have found so far are either in terrible conditions or extremely expensive. Therefore, I was very surprised when I entered an antiques shop and found a few anvils, two of them with markings of known anvil makers. I was even more pleased when I was told their prices, which weren't bad a t all. However, as I stated before, I am a total newbie and have no way of knowing, for example, what kind of metal these anvils are made of. One of the branded anvils is a Wilkinson of around 40kg (90lbs) and the other one is a 45.5kg (100lbs) Swedish Soderfors. I cannot make out much more and the antiquarian wasn't of great help either. I have looked for more information on both of them but only found different models of the same makers. So I decided to ask you guys if you knew anything about any of these anvils or if you could at least tell me how to recognise the material (which seems to be the most important detail to me).
This is the Soderfors anvil

This is its side, I found no markings anywhere else.

This is the Wilkinson, I thought I was in rougher conditions than the Soderfors.
This is the side of the Wilkinson anvil, there were no markings on the other side nor anywhere else that I could see.

These are the two of them seen from above, Soderfors at the top of the picture, Wilkinson at the bottom.

As I mentioned before, there were more than two anvils, four, to be precise. I didn't pay much attention to the other two because one of them was about the same size of my current piece of rail track and the other one had a long crack along its face. By the way, sorry for the poor photos, my phone was almost out of battery (in fact, it died just after taking the last picture) so I tried to get pictures of both of them as fast as I could.
I hope you can shed some light on the situation, I am mostly concerned about the material but any information or tips that you may provide will be greatly appreciated!!
Thanks in advance and Happy Holidays!
Jacques

[Latticino]

I'd jump on the Soderfors immediately if it was a good price.  Looks to be all the anvil that anyone would need starting out, and maybe forever if you don't do large architectural work.  Love that German double horn style, and it is in great shape, at least visually.  Try a rebound check if you can for the face.  That one looks almost too nice to use.  Do yourself a favor, if you get it, and work on your hammer accuracy for a while on the rail anvil.  It would be a shame for an errant blow to chip an edge there.

[Frozenforge]

They are both good quality anvils. The Soderfors should be cast steel, I havnt seen one like that before. The Wilkinson is a built up anvil with a faceplate. Test both for rebound and pick the best one! Or better take both home if they check out good!

[Frosty]

Welcome aboard Jacques , glad to have you. If you'll put your general location in the header you might be surprised how many of the Iforge gang live within visiting distance.

I won't surprise anybody who has enough spare time to waste and reads my long winded posts when I say this. I'd grab the Soderfors, it's hard to find a better anvil. If anvils are expensive enough and the antique store is a bargain get the other one too you should be able to turn it over, maybe pay for both or at least bring your costs down.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Fatfudd]

Either anvil would be a good choice, but the soderfors anvil is a real collectors piece and would probably sell for $8 or $10/ lb if it were on Ebay here in the US.