Today's Wall Street Journal has an article on old tractors that are fetching Maserati prices (subscription required):
An auctioneer barks out numbers in rapid-fire rhythm. In a standing-room-only crowd, proxy bidders hunch over their mobile phones and cover their ears. Auction-house assistants fan out and move close to bidders who seem most intent on winning.
What's at stake isn't contemporary sculpture or an Old Master painting on the block at a Manhattan auction house. It's an old tractor, a 1960s John Deere, at a recent auction in New Paris, Ind. After it sells--for $57,000--and it's time to drive the tractor away, there are so many spectators trying to get a closer look that the sleek machine can only inch its way gingerly off the block.
Old tractors like this one are exerting a new kind of pull. As collecting interests a broader, wealthier audience, prices for many models, especially those more than 40 years old, have surged. Some of the oldest tractors -- early 20th-century machines often powered by steam --can now fetch $100,000 or more, up from about $10,000 a decade ago. Rarer models can sell for much more.
While farmers have dominated the antique-tractor market in the past, they are now bidding against a new, well-heeled breed of collector. The influx mirrors the trend of city slickers buying up farmland for vacation homes in rural parts of the country.
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