David Bradley sickle mower - worth anything?

I've got a David Bradley sickle mower (917 5303) sitting out back that isn't doing me any good, and I'd like to send it to a new home before snow. I just don't know if that new home should be a scrap yard or a collector. I can't find any information online whatsoever about this mower. If anyone has any info to share (e.g. what if might be worth if I throw it on Craigslist) I'd appreciate it. It's no good to me, but I hate selling old equipment for scrap. Thanks in advance.

Pics that should have been included in the original post.

Have not seen one for years. That is what I grew up with and somebody should save it. Looks like it has the complete tractor lever lift setup. Dads and the other 2 that I saw were the model that had the horse levers and seat on. Ours came with both the horse toung and tractor toung, never used horse toung. Ours was a 5' bar, what size is that? They could have been bought with bolt on steel wheels.

brossow I would put it on craigs list for $250.00, it looks all complete and not all beat up and bent, there will be a david bradly collector out there somewhere that will jump all over that, quick pressure wash some air in the tires. make a great winter project for someone. lets save it, not scrap it. to much of our history has wound up in scrap yards and dumps! john

Thanks for the feedback, guys. The more I look at the pics, the more I want to keep it, even though I know nothing about restoring old implements and have TONS of other projects. Any idea how old it is?

It's intriguing that there seems to be virtually no information online about this model. I stumbled across a picture of a similar one posted on UShip years ago. That one has a seat installed (you can see the bracket on mine -- wish it had the seat!), but unfortunately, there's no other info available.

https://www.uship.com/shipment/UnknownGround-Driven-Sickle-Bar-Mower-Un/785430494/

Dad bought the one we had in late 40's. After buying a new Ford tractor in 44 he got a mounted mower for it but only kept it about 2 years as had to set wheels out to mount mower then a day to put it on or take it off. So he got rid of that mounted mower and got the David Bradley so he could just easly hook or unhook to use the tractor on the hay rake or what else he needed to use tractor for. They were not in the farm catalog anymore in 54 and most other makes quit making a horse drawn mower in about 50 so I would guess it is befor 1950 but with the bolt on wheels after 1946 just after WW2. We traded ours off in about 1965. We had a David Bradly hay rake and there is one on craigs list now for $350. Got rid of our hay rake in 81 after dairy heard left.

Hope it's not a violation of etiquette or rules to post a few more pics here. Since there's very little information available online, I thought adding anything at all might help someone someday. I did some digging through the archives at Newspapers.com and found several examples of this mower (though not identified by model number) in ads from the mid-'40s into the very early '50s. While there were text ads mentioning a David Bradley horse-drawn mower in the late '30s, the first picture ad I found was from the Salt Lake [i:6b7e65db79]Tribune[/i:6b7e65db79] on September 26, 1945:





The Harrisburg (PA) [i:6b7e65db79]Evening News[/i:6b7e65db79] had this ad on November 5, 1946:




This ad is from the Shreveport [i:6b7e65db79]Times[/i:6b7e65db79] on July 11, 1947:





There was a helluva sale in the Minneapolis Sunday [i:6b7e65db79]Tribune[/i:6b7e65db79] a couple years later (July 10, 1949):





Here it is in a full-page Sears Farm Store ad from the May 1, 1950, Danville (VA) [i:6b7e65db79]Bee[/i:6b7e65db79]:





Things seemed to be winding down by 1951, with far fewer newspaper ads, such as this one in the August 23rd Greenville (SC) [i:6b7e65db79]News[/i:6b7e65db79]:





Most mentions by this time were in classified ads and auction notices. In 1952, there were a few ads scattered across the country, including this one from the June 24th edition of the Green Bay (WI) [i:6b7e65db79]Press-Gazette[/i:6b7e65db79], in which it didn't even merit a picture in this factory clearance ad promising that "Sears has a 15 Year Supply of Spare Parts for these David Bradley Implements."





By 1953, sales of new equipment seemed to come to an end, with the April 5th Louisville (KY) [i:6b7e65db79]Courier-Journal[/i:6b7e65db79] advertising it at $70 off the normal price, and an Asheville (NC) [i:6b7e65db79]Citizen-Times[/i:6b7e65db79] on May 22nd advertising an optimistic price of only $46 off "Priced Without Tires," the last two picture ads in the Newspapers.com archives:

If anyone would like the full-size versions of these ads, feel free to send me a private message including your email address. They were scaled down automatically when they were uploaded here.

Unfortunately, editing of posts is disabled, so I can't correct the second pic (or a few other editing mistakes) in my earlier post. This is the 1946 Harrisburg (PA) [i:2eb43f93b6]Evening News[/i:2eb43f93b6] ad:

Ugh. Sorry for all the followups. I also meant to note that in 1953, the Asheville newspaper ad couldn't even be bothered to use the correct image when clearing out these horse-drawn mowers, showing a very different PTO-driven model instead.

That PTO mower was what replaced the horse drawn mower and was in the catalog from 54 to 56, when it was replaced with a semi mount mower a lot like a Deere No. 5 mower. That mower was only in catalog for 1 year before mowers were eliminated. I don't have catalogs from 53 or earlier to know when they changed models or if they had both at same time. That mounted mower is same as Ferguson like Dad traded off at about a year because it was so hard to mount. Never saw either the PTO mowers, the pull type or the semi mount.

They had both PTO and ground-driven (horse-drawn) models listed side by side in many of the ads. I didn't specifically save any of the PTO model ads, but here's one from 1947 that featured both.

I hate not being able to edit posts, so sorry about that. That ad clearly shows the mounted type and not the pull-behind PTO version you were talking about. The ad posted previously was the only one I noticed that had the PTO-driven pull-behind mower, but then I was specifically avoiding the PTO version in my searches.