[AT] Buying tractors

[Dean Vinson]

I always pay way too much, I suppose.  Not on purpose, of course, but my
usual tractor-purchase mode is to have been simmering on the need/desire for
one, casually paying attention to for-sale ads for a long time without any
real intention to buy, being my normal boring, responsible,
fiscally-cautious self.   Then all of a sudden one comes along that looks
especially nice and strikes me as the holy grail of whatever particular
model I've been thinking of, and I rush out to write a big check before
hordes of other folks beat me to it.   A while later it occurs to me that
there didn't actually seem to be too many hordes lining up.

Not really complaining, I guess.  My Super M and John Deere 620 are still
extremely nice tractors and serve me well all the time.  The 3020 I'd bought
quite some years ago wasn't such a good deal in the long run, but I long
since sold it and took my beating and moved on.   The 1950 Farmall M had
seemed an okay deal at $1000, and it was really fun and satisfying to tinker
with it in my garage for a few years while I still lived in town, so it
didn't hurt too much when after putting another $2000 or so into it on
numerous little odds-and-ends I sold it for $1350.   The first Super M, 20+
years ago now, would have been a good long-run deal if I'd hung onto it
instead of getting love-struck by that 3020 and needing to raise some cash.

Current purchase is a little Ford 3600, not yet picked up but soon to be.  I
think it'll be a very good tractor for what I need, but I probably should
have stayed in boring-responsible-fiscally-cautious mode a while longer.
Time will tell.  I've been kicking myself a little about rushing out to buy
it, but then this morning thought "Heck, don't know why this one would have
been different from any of the other times."

So I guess that's just my pattern.  Probably a pretty minor vice in the long
run.  Still, can't help but wish I had the skill/patience/luck to have a
somewhat less expensive pattern.  I recall the occasional
tractor-acquisition tales from the late Cecil Monson, who always seemed to
come up with something like "I was driving past with my truck when someone
flagged me down to haul off their old junk tractors, which turned out to be
an Allis G and two WD-45s that just needed the dust wiped off and the fuel
shut-off valve turned back on."

Dean Vinson
Saint Paris, Ohio