Anyone ever buy a Snap-on Set?

[Packard V8]

Looking through some old Snap-on catalogs and noticing once again, the complete General Service Set, Mechanics Set, Shop Master Set, Industrial Maintenance Set, et al. I realized in fifty years of being around tool users, I never saw an individual or corporation take delivery of one of those complete sets.

https://ia800203.us.archive.org/30/items/197050thAnniversarySnap-onCatalog/snapon1970.pdf

Must have happened often enough, as Snap-on gave them many catalog pages, but what's your experience; ever seen one of the big ones delivered?

And for bonus points, what the list price of a Shop Master Set today?

jack vines

 

[Cope]

I've wondered the same thing. I sold Matco and never even had anyone ask the price.

 

[Empty Pockets]

I've never seen anyone ever buy the complete set, either.

The old catalogs, however, are fun to look through

 

[johninct]

I know a guy that won a complete set maybe 20years ago.

 

[PeterT]

I swear I open up that PDF, I get that old musty catalog smell. Thanks for posting!

 

[Nagiom]

Not sure how complete the set was, but Snap on was part of the Indy 500 prize package in the 70s.

 

[Packard V8]

Not sure how complete the set was, but Snap on was part of the Indy 500 prize package in the 70s.

My memory is fuzzy, but if asked, I'd have said Proto were the "Official Tools of the Indy 500 for many years.

jack vines

 

[Nagiom]

My memory is fuzzy, but if asked, I'd have said Proto were the "Official Tools of the Indy 500 for many years.

jack vines

I'm sure my dad got some his snap on tools when his team won the 500 and the tools were doled out to the crew. I'm not sure if they were part of an official package or a contingency prize.

Edit: just talked to my dad and I was wrong. He thinks the set of tools they split was proto. I guess I just assumed that was hiw he got some his snap on.

 

[Coach James]

I love the PDF. I miss tool catalogs.

Coach

 

[jimmy-ray]

Those wheel balancers at the end of the catalog are neat. I thought it was funny that they mention you could balance a wheel in 3-5 minutes, thats an eternity nowadays. We had one of the bubble type balancers at my first shop. They even had an on the car unit in the catalog that balances the entire wheel, tire, brakes and all moving assemblies.

I just spent a few hours reading through that, pretty cool catalog. The uses of the tools and instructions of how to use them were much more comprehensive back then.

 

[mobius87]

I'm pretty sure one of the local service garages around where I live took delivery of a complete master set when they rebuilt. Long story short they had a fire that burned everything to go the ground but everything was luckily insured. This is the only time I've heard of someone or company buying a large Snap On set though. Even one of my business clients (that is a fortune 500 food ingredient manufacturing plant) that has more money than all my earthly possessions wrapped up in Lista cabinents has never bought a set from Snap On. Even though they have the money to do it they buy stuff when they need it only which I imagine is most people / companies even if they have the money otherwise. Probably the only time those are useful is like my example above when disaster strikes.

This gets me thinking though, when I build out my hobby barn / garage I'm seriously considering making a "fire proof" vault as part of the plan for all my tools. This would be to not only to protect from fire but also from theft. Where I'm in New England I don't have to worry about tornadoes or earthquakes. Flooding is possible but not precisely where I live (a good thousand feet above sea level).

 

[scissorman]

Pretty sure the majority of people who buy the sets are students from a trade school and they get a pretty nice discount on them.

 

[saryon7]

When I was a mechanic, I never saw anyone ever buy one either, but your post reminded me how much I used to drool over all those big sets when I was just starting out.

 

[chrisnazzy]

A few months back one of the oil techs at my shop bought the automotive apprentice set. Quick searching looks like it was the 9200agso. Retails for $6100. About half that with his student discount and he got some kind of government grant. IIRC he paid about $1700.

The Snap-on Industrial guy even swapped all the handled tools out for green after the fact to match the roll cart he had already purchased off the truck.

1st pic is off the SO site but the kit comes packaged quite different. 2nd pic is an ebay screenshot and is much closer to how it actually comes. Main differences from the 2nd pic were his set had the 3/8 drive general service set in the blow molded box with sae sockets included in it instead of separately. It also had both sae and metric line wrench sets in trays but only included 1 prybar.

Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk

 

[Mikeske]

As a retired aviation worker when I started the mechanic provided his hand tools and the drills and the air powered tools were provided. About ten years ago the company started to provide tools and it was complete sets of Snap-On tools. Everything from ratcheting screwdrivers, to the sockets and flare nut wrenches were all Snap-On. Complete sets for 20,000 production and service mechanics. Funny thing is the tool boxes were special ordered from Vidmar with badge readers.