[Farmall] Yuma auction

[John & Jan Paur]

Nice report Karl.  Sorta satisfied my yearning to go even tho I knew I 
wouldn't.  Be careful what you say about 70 yr. olds tho.  John


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Karl Olmstead" <olmstead at ridgenet.net>
To: "Farmall/IHC mailing list" <farmall at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Monday, March 05, 2007 3:23 PM
Subject: [Farmall] Yuma auction


> Went, saw, but didn't conquer.  I attended the first part of the Dome 
> Valley
> Museum auction in Yuma that ran Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  As 
> advertised,
> there were well over a thousand tractors.  In general, folks agreed that 
> it
> was the worst-run auction that they had ever seen.  Single auction stage, 
> so
> they had to sell about 1300 items a day.  Friday's auction ran from 9 a.m.
> until 1:30 a.m. on Saturday.  768 items of "collectibles" went first, much
> to the disgust of us tractor guys.  I attended virtually none of that
> action, but did see a doll house go for $900.  Most of the toys went for
> about $100 apiece.
>
> The tractors finally started at 6:30 p.m.  I was amazed/dismayed at the
> prices.  A really rough F-12 on round spokes (with both cast hubs 
> obviously
> cracked) that I felt was worth maybe $200 went for $700.  It looked like
> rough 10-20s were going for around $1700.  John Deeres weren't going as 
> high
> as I expected.  The best bargains I saw were small crossmotor Case 
> tractors,
> at around $3500.  I expected them to be $10K, based on rarity.  Titans ran
> $10K to $20K.  A very late F-20 (with turning brakes), stuck, no tag, went
> for $900.
>
> There were two tractors I really wanted.  One was an oddball.  It was a 
> late
> O-12, OS 3049, with all the O-14 features.. long shifter, tail seat, foot
> brakes down low, long steering column.  It had one brake pedal on each 
> side.
> It also had some decent non-IHC citrus fenders.  I don't know if it was an
> IHC experiment, or somebody who REALLY wanted an O-14 and converted a late
> O-12.  Nonrunning, cracked water jacket.
>
> I intended to offer $3500 for it, but dropped it to $3000 when I realized 
> it
> had an O-12 tag.  It sold for $3900.
>
> The other tractor was a real O-14, s/n 3899.  It looked to have been
> restored ten or twenty years ago.  Cracked water jacket.  Good 
> conventional
> fenders.  Both brake pedals were on the right side (down low, as they need
> to be on a tailseat O-14).  I decided to go whole hog and offered $5K for
> it, which is more than I have ever paid for an antique tractor.  It sold 
> for
> $7500.  I left at that point, around 9:30 p.m.  I had been at the auction
> thirteen and a half hours by then.
>
> My fallback position was to buy a good forklift.  I figured that everybody
> would be so focussed on tractors that the JCB 930 forklifts might go 
> cheap.
> Wrong.  A rough one went for $11K.  Another, the best looking, which had a
> starter ring gear problem, went for $13K, and the one I wanted (and was
> willing to spend $7500 for) went for $15K.  The two better ones were 1998
> vintage, and ran very nicely.  I'll admit that they are $20K forklifts, 
> but
> it never hurts to hope....
>
> So I left, at one day and one hour into the three day auction.  There were 
> a
> couple of O-12s left, but I knew they'd go for more than I wanted to pay.
> Over at the parts yard, where they held the Sunday auction were a couple 
> of
> pairs of tiptoe steel wheels for F-12 and a duckbill F-20, but it was a
> mess, as was the parts yard.  There were two wide front F-14s, but the 
> front
> axles were heavily welded, and one of the tractors was parked behind at
> least 100 feet of junk.  I guessed that it would take at least a week to 
> dig
> it out.  The parts yard and building were chaotic; junk and dirt piled
> everywhere, trees growing up through tractors, and nowhere for the auction
> crowd to stand around while items were being sold.
>
> Loading up was going to be a major problem.  Must of the museum was soft
> blow sand, and people were getting stuck left and right, even with empty
> trucks and trailers.  The auctioneer had arranged for one extendable boom
> forklift with 10K max capacity, but it would have taken him a week or two 
> to
> load the 1000 plus tractors.  And that was at the museum; there was
> virtually no room to maneuver or move stuff out of the way at the parts
> yard.
>
> So I got home a day early.  1000 miles, 700 of that with my 28 foot 
> flatbed
> behind the truck.  I hauled a tractor over to a friend's near Quartzsite, 
> AZ
> and left the trailer there.  When I came back, I loaded up a rough F-14 
> that
> he had given me a couple of years earlier and hauled it home, so I didn't
> come home empty handed.
>
> Now I know.  I've attended my obligatory big antique tractor auction, and 
> if
> I never attend another, that'll be just fine.  Too many people with way 
> too
> much money.  There were folks from 47 states and 18 countries present. 
> The
> auction building had 2000 seats, and they probably filled 1500 of them. 
> The
> best part of the weekend was feeling like a teenager again; the average 
> age
> of the attendees had to be 70 or better.
>
> I did come to one realization, though.  For prices like they were getting 
> at
> Yuma, I'd happily sell every tractor I own and use the ample proceeds to 
> buy
> one or two REALLY nice tractors.  And maybe retire a year or so earlier,
> too.
>
> -Karl
>
>
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