If you’ve nabbed one of these beautiful bargains at a local market, auction or garage sale, it’s worth identifying the age and model of your machine to see if you’ve managed to pick up a rare antique. These beautiful machines have evolved over the years but are still standing the test of time, with some of the older models being highly sought after by collectors and sewing enthusiasts.

If you don't know anyone who would want it, give it or sell it for a nominal fee (£50 or under seems reasonable to me)Ĭheckout Freecycle, or Freegle if you want to gift it to someone.Ĭraigslist, eBay or Gumtree if you want to sell it on for a few pounds.Singer sewing machines have a long and rich history, dating as far back as 1851.

You can give your old machine a new lease of life simply by giving it away to a worthy party, there are folks out there desperately looking for an old treadle or hand-crank machine, as long as it works. I have seen pristine machines going for around £200 - £300. Start it at £100 ($160 USD) and see where it goes. then I would suggest you auction it on eBay. If your machine is in absolutely tip top condition, the decals are perfect, it has no nicotine stains, the cabinet is pristine, etc. I have visitors to my blog who pick them up in garage sales and even in skips (dumpsters) I got my machine for free, as did my sister, a friend paid £30 in a charity shop.

They are not antique collectors and what you have is likely not an antique. Often the people who want them want a bargain, they want to be thrifty and sew without the cost of electricity. there are still hundreds of these machines around, looking for owners. Every housewife worth her salt would have had a treadle or hand crank sewing machine in her house.īy the 1980s and 1990s the market would have been flooded with second-hand manual sewing machines (all those salty housewives were shuffling off this mortal coil and make-do-and-mend was no longer common-place) Many people must have thought that Granny's old sewing machine would be worth something one day, so hundreds of families the world over stored the machines in basements, garages and at the back of the hall cupboard because it was a family heirloom, an antique.

and that was just one factory, in just one year. This factory was churning out around 13,000 machines a week - that is 676,000 a year. Between the 1900s and 1940s sewing machines were made by the thousand, my girl was made in the Singer sewing machine factory in Clydebank, near Glasgow in 1929.

Antique sewing machines worth