[AT] Really depressing loss of old iron...

[Ronald L. Cook]

It is a shame for us "accumulators" to lose all these goodies to the 
scrappers.  The scrappers just want to turn the quick buck and not have to 
deal with actually selling these old things that are worth far more than 
scrap.  A local amateur scrapper stopped here Sunday with a speed jack in 
the back of his pickup.  He wanted to know just what it was and if it was 
worth anything.  It had been set up to an old John Deere elevator and wagon 
hoist which he had already cut up.  He couldn't find any John Deere 
markings on the speed jack and was asking me if it was indeed a John 
Deere.  I said, "No" but it is a functional speed jack to be driven with a 
flat belt.  He said seeing as how it wasn't John Deere he would just throw 
it in the cast iron pile.  I said it was worth more than scrap and he said 
it would take too long to find a buyer unless I wanted it.  Well, I have no 
cash for anything, so it is gone.  Worth probably $3.65 at the scrap iron 
place.  I said there should have been a couple of tumbling rods and 4 
knuckles to go with this thing.  Really heavy.  He said with much 
enthusiasm, Yes!  They really added the weight to the load with the 
elevator and hoist on it.  Gone!

Ron Cook
Salix, IA
>         There was a property not far from me that I (and others) had been 
> watching for years. It
>belonged to the parents (now deceased) of the wife of a neighbor of mine. 
>Her parents had
>a tiny farm of maybe 20 acres and the guy was an "accumulator". The lot 
>around the old
>unused house was all grown over and filled with all manner of old iron. 
>One day a year or
>more ago he asked me to look at the stuff and try to give him an idea of 
>values. Just
>hitting the top of the stuff I saw there were maybe 8 to 10 cars, half a 
>dozen trucks, a
>couple of combines, several old rust eaten Model A Fords, several other 
>old vehicles I
>did not recognize, a Fordson, 3 or 4 F-20's (a couple with road gears), an 
>Allis WC and a
>bunch of bits and pieces of tractors and other implements. I had left him 
>a low offer on
>the WC. He had been using it but someone slipped in and took the manifold 
>and carb that
>winter. Several people had made him an offer on different stuff but he 
>would not sell
>them. A couple of months ago I noticed that someone was starting to drag 
>some of the
>stuff out into the field and figured that he was going to have an auction 
>sale which was
>what I had suggested to him. Then I heard that he was cleaning it out 
>because the county
>had given him notice. I already knew that he wanted to clean the property 
>and build a new
>home there further from town than here.
>         Saturday when Son Scott and I were talking to a friend of Scott's 
> that is the son-in-law
>of the owner of the local junk yard and who is the co-operator of that 
>yard, he gave us
>the bad news (this friend lives just around the corner from that 
>property). It seems that
>our neighbor struck a deal with some local scrap cutter for the whole mess 
>and ---
>"EVERYTHING"--- was cut up for scrap and hauled to a salvage yard about 25 
>miles south of
>here... Seems the scrapper is a bit of an idiot... Scott's friend went to 
>see him at the
>site and took a "bunch" of cash and tried to buy several pieces telling 
>the guy to just
>give him a price but the cutter just kept saying everything was worth more 
>as scrap and
>would not consider quoting an asking price of any kind.
>         The old iron flag is flying at half mast here...   :-(