Machinery Insider

While lower commodity prices have had a dampening effect on the sale of big-ticket items such as used tractors and combines, the same isn’t necessarily true of tillage implements. If anything, buyers are looking for late-model used iron when considering an upgrade to bigger or more advanced tillage tools.

Case in point is vertical-tillage tools.

This winter promises to offer some great bargains in late-model used combines. Prices don’t lie.

Take a look at the chart below. This represents the trends in auction (live and online) prices for various Case IH combines going back to July 2012. Below, you will find a table revealing recent final bids on late-model red harvesters.

Those Case IH trend lines reveal two key facts:

John Zakovec is a great example of what is happening with vintage tractor collecting. Zakovec grew up driving an Oliver 66, but his passion is for 40- to 50-year-old tractors, especially Oliver models. His growing fleet of collectibles fills the sheds on his farm near Lincoln, Nebraska. “I grew up farming with earlier-model tractors,” he says, “but I made a living with the tractors from the 1960s and 1970s. This was the era of the 100 hp.-plus tractors with cabs, turbocharge diesels, and dual wheels. You know, the muscle tractors!”

If your cutting platform is getting long in the tooth or you’re looking to upgrade to a wider head, now is the time to be looking for a deal on a late-model used replacement. My certainty of this fact was borne out by a shopping trip I took to Marion, South Dakota.

Marion is home to Wieman Auction (wiemanauction.com), which holds a massive consignment sale each year before harvest. By massive, I mean that nearly 140 corn heads or platforms sold in a day in addition to hundreds of combines, tractors, tillage equipment, and more. Acres of iron were up for sale.

I took a trip to South Dakota to confirm a rumor. I had been receiving reports of a potential glut of used late-model combines this summer, so in August, I traveled to that state to determine if there was any truth to the rumor.

So why South Dakota? One of the premium late-summer consignment sales was held there by Wieman Auction the first week in August. This particular sale was huge.