- 8,281
- 647
- 113
- Location
- Corpus Christi, TX
Began an inventory of the Common No. 1 Tool Set today. I'm putting some of the contents in the ammo cans I recently got after I lined them with foam so that I can organize them better and sort out duplicates. Sounds like a lot of effort for a tool set but this will, for the most part, be a tool set that is for showing and not for blowing.
What I'm already finding is
-more items than I remember are NIB or look new
-a fair amount of doubles which I'm going to use as my work set and/or make a second Common No. 1 or form a Common No. 2.
There are 1049 item lines of different tools in the Common No. 1 at my last count. Some of these item lines might have a requirement for 2 or 3 or more of the same tool. Right now I have all but 22 items. 20 of these are a socket set I've already got a trade planned for. One is a small combo wrench I just have to validate the specific brand and model number of all the other wrenches in the set before buying this specific wrench. And the last is an old, obsolete air compressor made by Kipper. So I'm almost there.
To my knowledge I am the only person to collect a Common and this is the most complete Common (even without the remaining 22 items) that I've ever known of. Of the ones I knew about, there was always a lot of items missing, even when initially issues. Add to this that every other year there was an official change that came out that added or deleted items. So if you look at the Common from ~1953 (I think the first year they started), there wasn't much in them...found it in an old PS magazine. Then they merged the Supplement set to the primary Common in 2010 (which caused a lot of confusion). This also coincided with the large scale fielding of the new Standard Army Tool Set (SATS).
Most likely end state will be to send this to a museum.
What I'm already finding is
-more items than I remember are NIB or look new
-a fair amount of doubles which I'm going to use as my work set and/or make a second Common No. 1 or form a Common No. 2.
There are 1049 item lines of different tools in the Common No. 1 at my last count. Some of these item lines might have a requirement for 2 or 3 or more of the same tool. Right now I have all but 22 items. 20 of these are a socket set I've already got a trade planned for. One is a small combo wrench I just have to validate the specific brand and model number of all the other wrenches in the set before buying this specific wrench. And the last is an old, obsolete air compressor made by Kipper. So I'm almost there.
To my knowledge I am the only person to collect a Common and this is the most complete Common (even without the remaining 22 items) that I've ever known of. Of the ones I knew about, there was always a lot of items missing, even when initially issues. Add to this that every other year there was an official change that came out that added or deleted items. So if you look at the Common from ~1953 (I think the first year they started), there wasn't much in them...found it in an old PS magazine. Then they merged the Supplement set to the primary Common in 2010 (which caused a lot of confusion). This also coincided with the large scale fielding of the new Standard Army Tool Set (SATS).
Most likely end state will be to send this to a museum.
