[AT] Buying tractors

[Phil Auten]

Yep. That was the way things always seemed to go for Cecil!

Phil in TX

On 2/12/2016 7:32 AM, Dean Vinson wrote:
> 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
>
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