Best approach to buying tools?

As far as Pittsburgh being junk, most may be but I all of my impact sockets are Pittsburgh and I've beat the pi$$ out of them and never broke one. The older Williams ratchets are hard to beat, the newer ones are junk. The older ones have a spanner nut on the back that holds the mechanism in, there is a screw in the middle of the selector on the new ones. I picked up several NOS long and short old ones about five years ago at a yard sale.