Jon Kinzenbaw: Thoughts from the "Thinkin' Chair"...

I think probably the Farmall MTA, the 54, where you had the live hydraulics, you had the live power takeoff, high-low, all those things on it were really ahead of their time in a lot of ways.

Well, at that time the 4010 and 4020 wasn't out yet.

It wasn't long until they came out. Then they basically took over in a big hurry.

There might have been a time when I looked for that particular model, but not anymore. I've basically got a good example of everything that I've repowered and a few besides. So, I don't have any real worries there. The one tractor that I always wished I would have been able to buy was an HARL at a Beacom auction that had just a few original hours on it. It was very, very original and the couple brought that tractor to the auction. I spotted it and I watched it for two or three days until it came up to be sold, and some guy out east that didn't have any idea what it was other than it was the lowest hour tractor — I pushed it to $39,000 and made him bid $40,000 and walked away from it. I'd have been sick if I'd have got it, but it just so irritated me that we jumped by the thousands until we got to $10,000, then it jumped to $20,000. It was one of those games where I chased him just to see what would happen. And I'd have been sick if I'd have got it. But I still wish I would have got the tractor for what it should have been. The guy that owned it said he was considering selling it for $7,000 before he brought it to the auction. And if I had just got to him... [laughter] That's the way those things go.

Not that I can think of at this point. I guess with the number of tractors that I have, I've got just about everything out there that I want. In fact, when people have come through here on a tour, they'll get ahead of themselves and we'll be about halfway through. 'Well, I haven't seen one of these,' they'll ask me, and I say, 'Well, just wait till we get done. If you haven't seen your favorite tractor, you must have just missed it because I've got just about everything that I thought was important in the collection.' There are a lot of guys that have collected low serial numbers and unique features, but I think there's some guys that have the first of a lot of things in the John Deere and the first of a lot of things that I don't happen to have, but I've covered a lot of those bases with unusual tractors or very nice examples thereof.

I wish I'd have taken more time to think that over. There's probably several unusual deals. I can't think of anything in particular other than I remember I was explaining to my nephew one time. We were standing out in the side of the machine shed — this has been 20 years ago and he was just a little boy, 12, 13 years old. And I was explaining to him that when you go to an auction, a lot of times I bid on something that I don't want early on and then drop it, because you don't want the auctioneer to really know what you're interested in. And so when the one you want comes along and you start bidding on it, the auctioneer never knows for sure when you're going to stop. That keeps a lot of those guys from plugging — I call it plugging it. They can pull the bids out of the air if you aren't watching them. And you might be, between you and the auctioneer, the only two bidding on something. And so I was telling him how you got to maybe fake interest in something that you really don't want just to keep them on guard. And the little boy turned around, he looked in the machine shed, and he said, 'Looks like whatever you're doing is working.' [laughter] Plenty of tractors.