Craftsman Tool Deals Worth Knowing About: Evolve Impact Set and the 500 Piece Mechanics Tool Set

Introduction

Walking through a Sears store in early November, it becomes clear pretty quickly that not everything is a genuine Black Friday deal. A lot of the shelves are full of older stock, and plenty of the markdowns are modest. But a few Craftsman items genuinely stand out, both on value and on sheer practicality. Two of them are worth a closer look: the Craftsman Evolve impact set and the big 500 piece mechanics tool set. One is a compact, nostalgic bargain; the other is a nearly complete workshop in a box for someone who wants to fill out a whole tool cart at once.

Craftsman Evolve Impact Set

The Craftsman Evolve name carries some real nostalgia. It goes back decades, the kind of set a parent might have picked up from Sears in the 1990s and still be using today. Seeing it on the shelf again at $80 for the set is interesting, though it is worth noting that this lands close to what comparable entry-level pro-adjacent brands charge, so it is not the clearance bargain it might appear to be at first glance.

What the Evolve set does offer is a complete, self-contained impact accessory kit in a proven format. If you already own an impact driver or impact wrench and want a dedicated set of sockets and accessories that can take the abuse, this is a straightforward way to get there without mixing and matching individual pieces. Its strongest argument is convenience and brand heritage rather than price.

At the $80 mark, this set makes the most sense for someone who values having a matched, ready-to-go impact kit and trusts the Craftsman name and warranty support behind it. If your only goal is the lowest possible price, other options in the store’s own aisles may undercut it.

Craftsman 500 Piece Mechanics Tool Set

This is the one that stops you in your tracks, mostly because of its size. The 500 piece mechanics tool set is genuinely heavy, and the pricing on the shelf reads around $800, marked down from a stated regular price of about $1,600. Whether it ever actually sold at that higher figure is debatable, but $800 for this much coverage is the real story.

Inside, the set is comparable to other retailer complete mechanic sets: a large assortment of wrenches including a decent run of ratcheting wrenches, plus the sockets and accessories needed to fill out an entire tool cart quickly. It is the kind of purchase that makes sense for someone setting up a home garage or a first workshop who would rather buy once than assemble sets piece by piece over the years.

The trade-off is obvious: at $800 this is a serious investment, and not everyone needs 500 pieces. But if you are starting from scratch and want coverage across SAE and metric sizes in one purchase, this set does that job in a single box.

What Else Was Marked Down

The rest of the store had a mixed bag of deals worth mentioning for context. An eight piece combination wrench set sat at $4.99, down from $40, which is a genuinely sweet deal. Deep socket sets in 18 piece configurations were $25 in SAE and metric, and seven piece hex socket sets had dropped to $6 in 3/8 inch drive with both metric and SAE included.

The tool storage side had some of the deeper markdowns. The large tool chests with notably deep drawers and a soft liner inside were marked down to around $220 on clearance, and the 450 piece sets that originally listed at $550 had come down to $229. Smaller items like three pack breaker bars at $32 and a 14 piece screwdriver set at $25 rounded out the reasonable picks.

Not everything priced well, though. A 52 piece wrench set at $109 works out to roughly two dollars per wrench, which is acceptable but not exciting, and the six piece screwdriver sets at $25 felt a little pricey for what they are.

Overall Impressions

The store itself felt like it was in transition. Much of the floor was older stock being cleared out, and staff were actively moving marked-down tool chests around. Storage seats with two drawers were still holding at $199, and a 20 gallon, 1.5 horsepower air compressor had come down to $280. Some items, like the magnetic parts trays, had no visible pricing at all, which made comparison shopping difficult.

The overall takeaway is that the deals here are selective rather than sweeping. If you go in expecting site-wide clearance pricing, you will be disappointed. If you go in knowing which specific sets are genuinely marked down, there is real value to be had.

Buying Advice

For most shoppers, the decision comes down to scale. The Evolve impact set at $80 is the smaller, more targeted purchase: buy it if you need a dedicated impact accessory kit and like the idea of a set with decades of history behind it. The 500 piece mechanics tool set at $800 is the workshop-founding purchase: buy it if you are starting from nearly zero and want sockets, wrenches, and accessories covered in one go.

If your budget sits between those two poles, the smaller socket sets and wrench deals in the store offered some of the best value per dollar, with the $6 hex socket set and the $4.99 combination wrench set being the standout bargains. Whichever route you take, checking the actual markdown against the original price tag is worth the extra minute, since not every red sticker in the aisle tells the full story.

Conclusion

Craftsman’s current lineup rewards shoppers who know what they are looking for. The Evolve impact set delivers a complete, heritage-backed impact kit at a fair but not remarkable price, while the 500 piece mechanics tool set is the clear pick for anyone building a full workshop from scratch. Combined with a handful of genuinely good small-set deals, there is enough here to justify a careful walk through the aisles, as long as you go in with a list and a healthy skepticism toward the biggest percentage-off signs.