Lets see - my own stuff is a lot of Stanleys for planes, though I have a couple others. Old ones, mostly, as they tend to need little tuning while all new planes need total tuning. Akin to smoothing the sears on firearms, if you like. Look for how well it was cast, that will tell you a lot about the overall quality.
The Lie-Nielsens are lovely, but - for the price of one that you won’t dare use you can find six old Stanleys you will actually use fearlessly. If you can afford the Lie Nielsens, well, you can afford to pay someone else to do the work, probably with some old Stanleys.
Don’t pass up some of the old wooden-bodied concave and convex planes, a little tougher to sharpen but very useful.
Spokeshaves - I use mostly the Stanleys, tuned up some. Older ones are great.
Handsaws - lots of guys like the Japanese/Eastern style pull-saws. Including a guy I work with regularly. But I have spent a lifetime with the push-style Western saws halfway well, so I’ll stick with being a dinosaur. I have a bunch of Disstons, good if you can find them, look down the sawblade and look out for kinks in 'em where some $%*& pushed a dull one too hard. The Swedish saws are nice, the English saws superb. A little surface rust is no drawback, deep pitting is. Same for all used tools.
Chisels- again, I like Western style chisels. Marples are my beaters, Sorbys for really nice work, Stanleys for where I may find nails in the wood. I am told that Buck Bros. are nice. If there isn’t steel at the butt of the handle, it’s not meant to be struck but instead just pushed by hand, paring off a little. And you never, ever smack a chisel with anything but a wooden mallet, lest I seek you out and visit the Wrath of Khan opon you. Not one of those stoopid sculptors mallets but a good hardwood mallet with some heft to it.
Gouges same thing, I have a few English ones that are very nice.
Scrapers - Sandvik or others, very nice tools once you learn to use 'em. And after you learn to burnish the edges properly. Leaves a finished surface. If you can find an old Stanley scraper plane, with the ‘iron’ actually pointing the ‘wrong way’, score it. Great tool. Likewise the spokeshave-like scraper holders.
Drawknives - I don’t have any particular preferences, myself. But avoud the cobby ones made of late, Look for one that has some refinement to it. There are also curved ones, which can be marvellously good for specific tasks.
Rasps and files - I like Nicholson’s. The new ones are fine. The used ones may be used up.
Sharpening stones - and I use them rather than the Scary Sharp system, but again I’m a critter of habit. I mostly use a Soft Arkansas, but to bring back something you may want a Combination India stone to do rough shaping. Never use a dry grinding wheel. You will ruin the steel unless you really know what you’re doing. Norton makes good ones, though there are some very nice Arkansas stones made by others.
Adzes, axes, slick chisels and the like I’ll leave for another day. And have a look through http://pages.sbcglobal.net/djf3rd/index.html for quite a lot more, from a gent who came up in the trade I’m from.
hope that’s of use
doc