It really depends on what you're wanting to do with it. There are all kinds of saws, for different purposes. You want a dovetail saw? A tenon saw? A carcase saw? A cabinetmaker's crosscut? A finish carpenter's crosscut? A ripsaw?
If you're thinking about serious woodworking, you're going to want to spend some money on good tools. I concluded long ago that life is to short to waste money on cheap tools. There's an old saying along the lines of "the man who buys quality tools cries only once." Yeah, it may sting when you drop $150 on a handsaw, but then you'll have it the rest of your life, you'll be motivated to care for it properly, and you'll enjoy using it.
Anyhow, I have been buying, selling, accumulating and using antique woodworking tools for nearly 20 years. I have found them at garage sales, flea market, estate sales and auctions, country auction, eBay, Craig's list, junque shoppes, anteek mauls, etc.
Often they need a little re-habbing, but for me anyhow, that's half the fun. It's how you learn about the tool - how it is meant to be properly set up, how to fettle it into fine tune, and ultimately how to hold and use it.
Decent handsaws typically can be had for under $10 a piece, but they might need a little cleaning, de-rusting and sharpening. There are a few (very few, unfortunately) old tool dealers who will re-hab old saws and then sell them, but you're going to pay more like $30 to $100 for them - but they're well worth it.
There are several tool-collecting clubs and organizations that have regular meets and auctions, which are great events for learning, meeting great people and building your arsenal. The largest is the
Mid-West Tool Collectors Association (M-WTCA). Although they're called "Midwest," they have regional meets all over the country.
The biggest regular auctions in the U.S. are
Brown's, which happens every October in Hershey, PA, and
Martin Donnelly's "Live Free or Die" auctionsup in New Hampshire and occasionally elsewhere. The
Fine Tool Journalalso is a regular publication that hold large tool auctions by mail regularly - but those mostly are high-end collector-grade tools, not users.
In the past 10-20 years, there has been a resurgence in interest in quality woodworking tools, so several small but high-quality tool makers have cropped up. If you want truly good-quality woodworking tools, these are the outfits to buy from, rather than Stanley or Sears or Lowe's or Home Depot. A sampling includes:
Lie-Nielsen
Garrett Wade
Lee Valley
Even
Rockler has some decent hand tools. You might start there to find a reasonably decent, but relatively less expensive, Japanese pull saw.
Tools for Working Wood also has a lot of good stuff, including tools from Gramercy, which are good.
Some of the best saws you'll find anywhere for the money can be had from
Wenzloff and Sons. If you're not used to what quailty hand tools cost, though, you might want to sit down before looking at their prices.
One of my absolute favorite saws is a big 28" 5.5-point rip saw made by Richardson Brothers, which disappeared from the planet in 1907. This saw was made in the 1880s. Properly sharpened, it blasts through planks. Of course, I usually use my table saw for ripping, but now and then for smaller jobs (or if my table saw is <ahem> covered...), I'll whip out the RB ripper. I paid all of $7 for it about 15 years ago in a second-hand junk shop. I cleaned it up and discovered it still had the original factory grind on the teeth - looked like nobody had ever used it. After a touch-up sharpening, it's a sweet saw.
Now look what you did - you got me monologuing on old tools... not hard to do!
Bill T.
Richmond, VA
"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible." - T E Lawrence