[AT] Looking for planter parts

[Herb Metz]

Dean,
Very interesting; you probably have some method in mind on how you can best 
preserve your successful efforts and inform the JD world, and others, of 
this phase of JD History.   Looking forward to your sharing of photos, etc. 
Herb(GA)


-----Original Message----- 
From: deanvp
Sent: Saturday, July 22, 2017 9:31 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] Looking for planter parts

Charlie,
Understand, I had one of those moments of being in the right place at the 
right time a few years ago. Over the years I had been buying some NOS and 
used parts from the 40's and 50's that a JD dealer had stored in a shed that 
I was allowed to go look in occasionally. I would usually find a part or two 
that was of interest and we would haggle for awhile and usually but not 
always I would end up taking them home. Then one time I was at the dealer 
and they told me they had purged all the rest of that era parts from their 
active stockroom and would I be interested in buying the lot???? 10 pretty 
good sized boxes. They gave me a printed list of what was in the 10 boxes. 
Would I buy the whole bunch for $xx? My mind rattled through the list and I 
thought for a microsecond and said "YES"  knowing just a few parts that were 
in there were worth that. I didn't even try to bargain.  That was several 
years ago and I'm still trying to sell it all off. One of the best buys I 
have made in a while.  I had also been introduced to the two NOS Parts 
warehouses and found several parts I really needed for restorations I was 
working on. This was about the time where I was doing a whole bunch of 
historical research on JD's 800 Series hitches. Part of that research was 
trying to figure out all the various Mast Brackets the JD sold to adapt 
their implements to the 800 Series Evener Bar. That turned out to be a 
substantial challenge. As far as I know no one had been down that road other 
than maybe JD Engineering in the early 50's and there was no documentation 
to be found including in JD Archives. Well, all that did was to send me off 
on a long, long hunt. Months even years later I was able to identify that 
there were 17 different Mast Brackets designed and sold.  Then I made a 
Fatal mistake. I asked myself:  I wonder if it would be possible to find and 
own one each of these 17 Mast Brackets?  So off I went on a multi year 
pursuit. Two years ago I finally found the 17th one.  To close the circle 
back to the original subject of this conversation. About 70% of the brackets 
I found are NOS. Never been used. Are they worth all that much? Probably not 
but the chase was fun.  The  three letter abbreviation "NOS" gets 
everybody's attention.

Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy Tablet
-------- Original message --------From: charlie hill 
<charliehill at embarqmail.com> Date: 7/22/17  3:48 PM  (GMT-07:00) To: Antique 
tractor email discussion group <at at lists.antique-tractor.com> Subject: Re: 
[AT] Looking for planter parts
Dean,  I think I have told this to the group before but it still pains me
every time
I think of it and you just reminded me again.   About 20 or so years ago a
doctor that lives
just down the road from me and I were chatting at a local store.  He was
explaining how
he grew up on the DelMarVa peninsula and that his grandfather had been an IH
dealer
there for many years but had shut his dealership down sometime before (I'm
thinking now in
the 70's or 80's).  He had just shut the doors.  The Dr. was explaining to
me that it was time
to do something with the property and he had just been up there and they had
hired a man
to HAUL OFF all of the OLD PARTS AND EQUIPMENT that were left in the
building.

I nearly died right on the spot.  He had no clue that the stuff could be
worth anything.
Still makes me sick.  I only hope the guy they hired was savvy enough to
"haul it off"
to his own building.

Charlie