So I cruise the VW dieselcar & 4 by 8 trailer the fifty odd miles to an auction near Brookings this morning. Good turnout- half an hour before the auction starts and there's already forty or so pickups and cars parked in the pasture across the road. The pasture on the auction sideof the road is full of "merchandise"... The lifetime "collection' of a 74 year old farmer who's cashing in his chips and maybe retiring.
Lotta junk here, with a few gems- two '58 Chevys, one restorable and a half dozen medium sized tractors and implements. A dozen or so lawnmowers, a three wheel ATV, and huge bundles and skids of cedar siding and miscelanious fence posts and such. A 30 foot or so long travel trailer and slide in camper and a VW Rabbit. And a lot of stuff that belonged in the dumpster. Early on I scored a pair of car ramps for $3, not a bad deal.
On with the auction- The travel trailer barely brought a thousand dollars, and the slide in camper a hundred... Lots of aluminum in them. Next up was the first '58 Chevy, a four door hardtop with bucket seats and a combination spotlight/mirror and only slight rust. One would expect a 348 V-8 with all those fancy options, but under the hood was a 6... Making this probably a rather rare '58. Now a few years back '58 Chevies went for top dollar, eclipsed only by the 55-57 models and the Corvettes. Well, top bid barely topped $400. The other '58 went for a bit over $200, barely local scrap price. On to the VW- With rust clear up to almost the windshield and the engine in pieces it went for $225. Who'd a thunk a rusted out four door Rabbit with a blown engine would sell for as much as a '58 Chevy? Clearly, the times they are a changing. The winning bidder for the Rabbit needed some parts off it, and sounded like he and one of the losing bidders were working a deal to pick over the carcass.
Now yesterday I noted the buyer's market for building material is pretty weak, but showing a pulse. Looked like the retiring farmer had a sawmill and had produced quite an inventory of cedar siding. He's been selling it for 15 cents a lineal foot for 4 inch wide and 25 cents for 6 inch wide, well under the going prices at the local lumber, etc. emporiums. He had enough on hand to beautifully side several homes and the auctioneer couldn't even get half his asking price, so he pulled the siding from the auction. The market was almost as bad for some usable treated wood, fence posts, and wire fencing that went for little more than firewood and scrap metal prices.
It got worse as the crowd thinned and they moved on to the machinery. Haying equipment was in the $100 range, if just the industrial engines that powered them ran the engine alone is worth more than that. And how about a 50 foot or so long grain auger for $25? Yup, saw a couple go for that. Need an german Opel car engine? 4 for $10! I paid up and left before they got to the tractors and the early 60s Chevy fire truck, the fire truck was rust free and looked like an easy restoration.
So why is the market imploding? Well, there were a lot of cars and even a Prius and a Harley in the parking pasture, so a lot of the "merchandise" on offer was simply too big for us to haul home in our fuel efficent vehicles. Yup, even in rural America the big pickups are getting parked in favor of more economical wheels. And the housing market, even the remodeling market, is beyond even life support- it's DOA. Heck, between the window & door auction yesterday, this auction, and the one up in Aberdeen you could probably score enough materials to frame and enclose a small home for less than $10,000. If you're thinking of building, just buy up the materials cheap at auctions and then design the house around them!
My conclusion? The old car collectors must be hurting when a restorable '58 Chevy goes for less than a grand. And when a 30 year old subcompact rust bucket with a blown engine gets bid up over $200 for a few usable parts, obviously a lot of folks can't afford anything newer- all the bidders own similar 30 year old VW dieselcars and are scrounging for parts. Yup, even out here in the country we're thinking small- I dropped out of the bidding on a mid 70s Columbia bicycle with Astabula crank and only one working brake when the bidding hit $10. It'll need $30 worth of tires and brake parts before it's ridable, but folks are getting desperate...
( Crossposted from Buffalo Ridge Blog )