We Are Buying Knobs

Please note that we are not buying tubes at the current time, only knobs. We will update this page if and when we run low on our stock of tubes and are buying them again.

Sundial Wire is looking for porcelain knobs that we can buy for resale. For each item, we pay 1/3 of our sale price for that item. We price the pieces based on their condition when received.

We pay:

• $2.00 a piece for any knob or tube or cleat pair that is in VERY GOOD condition (only very small chips, no marks other than a tiny bit of dirt, no paint, straight or nearly straight nails).
• $1.00 for pieces which are in GOOD condition (slight chips, some paint, more than a little dirt, slightly bent nails),
• $0.50 for pieces in FAIR condition (large chips, no major breakage, but can have paint, significant dirt).
• $0.25 for pieces in POOR condition (significant chips or cracks but each half still in one piece, stuff stuck on, significant dirt, paint, or marks, knob pairs without their nails).

Notes:

• Please note that if a knob does not have a nail, it is in POOR condition regardless of appearance. It might be worth your while as a seller to put nails with the best knobs if you can.
• A lot of knobs can be cleaned up, especially the glazed ones. Sundial will not do that cleaning, but will rate them as is. If you think it will increase the grade of the pieces, you might want to clean them off.
• Please note that newsprint dirties the porcelain. You will get better prices if you pack the knobs and/or tubes in unprinted paper or bubblewrap.
• Paper is often not adequate to prevent the porcelain from chipping during shipment. We recommend bubble wrap or something like it to prevent breakage. Also, we really recommend wrapping each knob or tube in its own bubble wrap or thin foam. We often use smaller boxes within shipping boxes to ensure that the items are packed tightly. If they have room to rattle, they get chipped.
• These prices apply to knobs with both the top and bottom portions, cleat pairs, and tubes of any length.
• We pay $0.15 per piece for shipping. This is enough to cover flat rate Priority Mail shipping in most cases.

You can tell us how you would categorize the items or you can let us do the determination. Either way, we will do our own evaluation when we receive the product, which is how we determine what we would pay you.

Rest assured that nobody who has sold us knobs and tubes has been unhappy and we are motivated not only by a sense of fairness but by wanting people to send us more knob and tube supplies when they come across them.

Before sending us anything, please e-mail us at: custserv@sundialwire.com and let us know what you have. We will let you know if we are interested. We will not necessarily purchase the contents of packages we haven't agreed to receive.