Day At the Auction!

Getting the ambiance!

Where's the flannel shirts?

I thought I was all ready for our big adventure. I hadn't been to an auction for a long time so I was really kind of excited. My husband's only advice was "don't raise your hand or nod your head!" After we arrived, we realized we were unaware of the dress code. It was a mostly male group of bargain seekers and we sort of looked out of place, as we didn't have a farm cap and a flannel shirt. (Since it turned out to be in the mid-80's I was glad I didn't have flannel!)

The sale started at 9:00am and we thought we'd be done by noon. However, they started the sale with a lot of small equipment (and stuff that looked like junk to me). They did have some intersting looking items, and we were thinking maybe we should have gotten a bid number.

The Case 411--Dad's Work Horse

My good-looking siblings with the Case.

At about 11:00 we were told it would be another hour until they started selling the tractors, so we headed to the Home Restaurant for a quick lunch, then hurried back so as not to miss any of the excitement.

There were really a lot of people at this sale. It was billed as an antique tractor sale, and there were probably around 100 tractors for sale. I was amazed. I tried to get a picture of the row of tractors, but it didn't turn out. There were 2 rows with approximately 50 tractors in each row. Our beloved Case was about in the middle.

We were getting a little nervous, as some of the tractors that we thought would sell for a fairly good price went for a song. When they finally got to our tractor, the auctioneer, Bob Frey, said "this is a Case 411, built in 1955; it has new rubber, and the engine was re-built several years ago at 4-County" then he paused and said, "Oh, this tractor belonged to Walter Gisel?! He was one of our good local boys, let's get the bidding going" There were 2 parties that were definiltely interested in the tractor, which was good for us, because they kept bidding each other up higher. We were very pleased with the final outcome, $2300. (Yoder & Frey had told Lowell, before the sale, that it was probably worth $2500-$3000).

We decided Dad would be very pleased; he probably knew that we kids wouldn't take care of the precious Case as it deserved to be cared for; so it's good we could sell it to some one who will love it and take care of it. We know that he often went to Yoder and Frey auctions, so we felt we made a good decision for us and for him.