I just spent the day at the "middle River collection" auction in Northern Minnesota: http://www.vanderbrinkauctions.com/auctions_details.php?detail=9&allimages=NO 350 cars sold and the crusher got at least a hundred of them. He placed a starting bid of $200 on each car, so the 350 or so bidders in attendance could bid starting at $225. The really good stuff went for fair market value for the location, but many potential project cars and really good parts cars will get squashed. It's an absolute shame that folks don't step up and save these cars when such an opportunity arises. I did my part and bought five - about as many as I have room for, but I couldn't save them all. So here's my question..... So many guys complain about loosing cars to the crushers but do nothing about it. What gives?
maybe its because the auction is so far away from citys with larger population. it wouldnt be worth it to bid and ship. if something was like that next to LA or Seattle/Portland OR more would be sold. I just get pissed when i see of auctions and there always in the middle of nowhere.
The worst part is the guy with the crusher will not sell any parts. I asked to buy a bed off a brown 50 Chevy pickup. He said tough **** it’s getting crushed.
How much did the 49 to 53 Studebaker half ton go for? I had been planning to go, but competing demands on my time won out. Thanks.
that's exactly it. i see cool cars for sale in remote places all them time. I'd buy them all day long here but where they are, I couldn't take them if they were free. it ****s.
if there was a 51 2door i would of bid on it!! there was a 51 lincoln? i bid on the 51 moredoor merc and lost, it sold for $825 and i also bid on the packard fastback for the cousin and lost it at $1025 oh well. yep if there was a 2door there would of been some biddin wars !! there was couple of cars that were damn sweet and they sold for nothing!!
In the middle of nowhere land is cheap enough to store everything, and no neighbors to complain about the junk. Near major cities the land is bought by developers, the new subdivision neighbors complain about eyesores or pollution, and people are around who ask to buy the stuff.
..because if they were in a place close to a main center you would be paying a premium if indeed it was still there.
i'm out in country australia - 200km from the major city and there's 40 fords late 30's chevys and trucks galore but people don't go to get them- ive been offered cars for free and ive collected about 5- 50's chevy sedans in the past two years all for reasnable prices and ive asked guys from perth about ***ming down and getting trucks and that because I can't collect them all, but for them its "too far away". It's also the point that they spend too much time on ebay waiting for a coupe to appear nextdoor! tyler if your in WA and want a forty's truck sent me a pm
I just can't stand the way the crushers think. All our cool stuff is nothing to them. They wont even let you get parts? WTF? They gonna lose 5$ in weight? seem like bs. Maybe the "crusher" was a schill for the auction company or owner? ****s that the price of steel is so high they can afford to put down such a high minium bid. GO CRUSH SOME NEW STUFF YOU CRUSHERS! LEAVE US ALONE!!!
You gotta be kidding me if thier gonna crush all that? Thats a GOLDMINE in parts out there Have these retards ever heard of stripping them for parts to sell for waaay more than crushing them? crushing all those cars is like crushing Americana.All those cars remind us when The USA was making great cars and great looking ones as well.
If someone had got a container ship and put everyone of those trucks and cars on board, then shipped them over here...they would have made a fortune.All those cars/trucks are the sort of thing we pay thousands for...beat up old knackers that nobody wants.All our old stuff got melted down for WW2 or just rusted away, or was just too damn ugly.It is a crying shame any of those were crushed.
VanDerBrink says they have the seller in mind I bet if the seller was saving thies cars his first thought was not to crush them. Hold your auction then crush whats left.
Here's the deal with the crusher - he brings in his mobile equipment, crushes on site, then loads and trucks the cars into Canada. Offering up parts for sale would get in the way. Some good news, though - the owner of the cars cut a deal with the crusher allowing him to strip anything he wants off any of the crusher-bound cars before they go. He's 70ish in not great health, so how much can he strip in 2 weeks? Expect a parts only sale sometime in the future! VanDerbrink will post the auction results on their website in a few days. Anything that sold for $175 or $200 will get crushed and some others too. SLDDNMATT - I bid on the the Packard fastback also and got out at $975. That was a really neay car - I should have kept on it.
some cars aren't worth saving. i counted at least 100 i wouldn't want a part of. it doesn't help when a guy has hotrod dreams in a sea of land barges.
The MSRA has more members than about any other state organization. Plenty of folk up nort, they just didnt step up.
that is the dumbest statement I have heard all week. Why? maybe because folks in the country have ROOM to collect cars? jeesh.
Let's see, for me it's 3 days to get there, 1 day there, 3 days coming back, limited on the amount you can load back, finding available space to stash the save and then being able to admire a $400 save that you have $1600 invested in.
True, you are aways away, but there are hundreds of thousands of people within a days drive of that auction, many of those will be the first to complain.
Simple "supply and demand".....the people in rural areas have plenty of raw materials to choose from, so the prices stay low and local "collectors" can afford to am*** large collections of forlorn vehicles. In metropolitan or suburban areas, there is less supply and more demand, thus the prices are higher and the collectors need more money to am*** a collection and more money to maintain a collection due to higher property values, taxes and stricter regulations about keeping old cars in sight of the public. I live in New York where a lot of old tin is so rusty that it would take a lifetime to restore it. Sometimes I think it would be very wise to travel out to the western states and bring back vehicles that are at least structurally solid. A few days on the road would save hundreds of hours in the shop. But the reality is that you need to look the vehicles over before deciding to buy. Traveling 1000 miles just to find out that you don't want the car is what keeps most people from doing it. At least at an auction there would be lots of potential purchases to consider, so it might be worth it. But most of us are looking for a specific make, model and year. Rarely do you find a whole bunch of exactly the same car that you are looking for in one location. Unfortunately, the crushers are not picky...if it's metal they'll buy it. They can turn a profit in a matter of days while a hobbyist who wants to salvage it may not realize a profit for years. Meanwhile he has to tie up his time, money and storage space in a vehicle that is not one his "rides". Not many people are willing to do that.
Let me ask this question. Did you make any effort to post this on HAMB or similar sites so people that people who might buy would attend, or keep it to yourself thinking you would get a better deal without so many "car people" there.? I know many people that would do the latter, only to tell about it later such as you have.
I love this stuff (sarcasm, there). Just spent a couple days hearing it from a guy because I'm probably going to crush a car he wanted. $225 for a good early pickup bed is cheap - buy the whole damned truck, take the bed off, and leave the rest if you don't want it. Or is that too obvious for folks? If it's that good of shape, you can probably take off enough other stuff to resell for $225 and have the bed for FREE. I totally understand the crusher mentality. It basically amounts to "money talks and ******** walks" ... he's a businessman. Make it profitable for him to deal with you, or outbid him on the whole car. I know if I'm him I don't even want to talk to someone too cheap to go $225 or $250 for a whole vehicle who just wants the bed off it... your measly $50 or $100 offer for that part ain't even worth my time, it's just ******** and a h***le and not worth the headache for a few more dollars profit. I go out and buy and save cars, if I concentrated on one I'd probably have a nice one by now, but instead I spend all that money on more cars, and spend a lot of my time dealing with this ******** of trying to sell to people who expect K-mart customer service, free delivery hundreds of miles on $500 cars, or just want the three hardest to find parts off a car I have and expect me to take the time to sell them to him. It gets old in a hurry when you tell someone "no" and they carry on like a three year old for a week about it. People on this very board say the most ignorant things about the stuff I've saved, but I haven't seen a one of them out there saving the stuff - even if it is a piece of ****, I went and got it. Another 10 or 20 years, there will be virtually no old-car junkyards left, or they'll be so hidden and remote they may as well be on the moon. I'd love to hit an auction and buy 10 or 20 cars for $225 each, especially if they're even half as nice as the Merc someone posted above. I've had to pay more for cars a lot ****tier than that one. The best one this week is this ***** who offered me $275 on a '55 Chevy parts car, that I said 'no thanks' on because I can sell three parts off it for more than that and crush the rest for around $150-$200 depending on what I fill it with. First he's telling me he can bid my eBay auctions if he wants to through his buddies, then he's telling me the stuff is rusty old junk, in the SAME email message. It's like he's running for office or something. Just a ********ter. They get easier and easier to spot.
I think the reason that these auctions are in the middle of nowhere...is because where else is someone going to be able to am*** a collection of this size? L.A.? Downtown Chicago? Vancouver? Anwhere else, and the city/county would have cited, towed and crushed years ago... Just my two cents...