A retiree at the Portland fleamarket told me my great grandfather's anvil was made in 1897, not 1940 like my family always claimed

Max Burns · 2026-09-30T21:00:04.294053+00:00

I brought it in mostly just to show off, and he flipped it over, pointed at a stamp near the base, and started rattling off the maker and date like it was nothing. Took him maybe 15 seconds. Turns out a bunch of American anvils have date stamps hidden under layers of rust and old paint, and nobody in my family had ever bothered to look. He said he's logged over 400 anvils at shows and swaps around the Pacific Northwest. Anybody here ever find a surprise stamp on a piece they thought they knew the history of?

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A retiree at the Portland fleamarket told me my great grandfather's anvil was made in 1897, not 1940 like my family always claimed | Blacksmiths - Babble Community