Welcome to Moving Iron with Casey Seymour and Greg Peterson. The podcast for anyone and everyone involved and interested in the business of equipment. If you want to understand what trends and market forces are impacting the price of your iron, you've come to the right place. Buckle up. It's time to move some iron.
Hello and welcome to Moving Iron Podcast. This edition of Moving Iron Podcast is brought to you by John Deere. I've got Greg Peterson on to talk about what's happening in the market. Greg, how are you doing today?
I'm doing well, Casey. How are you today?
Doing good, man. Doing good. Trying to survive this heat that we got going on. You got heat and smoke. So, you got the best of both worlds.
Yeah, we had heat and humidity last week up here in Minnesota. It was in the 90s, dew points pushing 100, and yeah, now the Canadian smoke. We were just chitchatting before we started recording here. I went out to play golf last night and I had a couple drives and I literally couldn't see them. Just like, where'd it go? Off into the smoky mist or something. I did find them, so that was good. But one was in the rough, one was in the fairway. So, 50%.
Yeah. Well, that's my excuse every time from now on, Greg. I lost it in the smoke. That's what I'm going to tell.
I couldn't see it. I'm pretty sure it was down the middle. I'll just drop one here and we'll just play it from here. How about that?
That's, I do that a lot, too. Like, oh yeah, I see where that one went and just drop it. But right in the middle of the fairway. As a matter of fact, I lost it out.
The key to golf is whatever makes you happy. That's the key thing.
Golfing and fishing, I think, have a lot of correlations with each other, right? You know, I caught a fish this big, like, you know, but golfing is the same way. Like, I got a seven when you really got a 12, you know what I mean?
Yeah. I got visiting with some buddies. We were playing, well, I was on a trip to Scotland actually last month with some of my golf buddies, and one of my buddies on our last round got a hole in one at this famous course called Panmure, where Ben Hogan practiced there before the 1953 British Open. Beautiful course. And my friend Davey got a hole in one. So, we were chit-chatting and they was like, 'Pete, how many hole ones you got? You play your whole life.' And I was like, 'I just got one.' And like, 'Well, that's kind of boring.' And I was like, 'Well, but let me tell you about the time I got it. I was actually playing a tournament and I've been playing not so good the last 20 years. I've been working too hard on the machine business.' But I just made a triple bogey on a par four. So, I had a seven. Then I get up on this par three and I can it. So I went 7-1, and the next hole was a par five and I had two out of bounds and I had to make like a 12-footer for a nine. So I went 7-1, and my buddy Dave, he goes, 'What area code is that? 7-1.' But yeah, golf is golf. I think it's a good business analogy, too. It's like a lot of times you hit a really good shot and it gets a bad hop and it's like, well, that wasn't fair. But I learned when I was a little guy, it's like life's not supposed to be fair. Golf kind of makes you accept that at a young age, I think. Or you can choose not to accept it and drop one in the fairway.
Yeah. I mean, I play golf by myself. I usually get at least two hole ones and I typically shoot 1000 par, but no one's there to see it.
I can't keep the pressure.
It's the pressure that other people playing that ruins my game. So that's what happened.
I did post a note on social this last week. It was, you know, the British Open just finished as we're recording this yesterday on Sunday. Played at Royal Birkdale and actually played there 21 years ago. I played in the British Amateur, and so it was fun watching the tournament this week trying to remember the holes. But the last hole is kind of a famous super tough par four. The guy from New Zealand birdied it to win the tournament. But my dad was caddying for me and I pushed my tee shot into the rough, and I think I was like six over or seven over. Just had to make a bogey to break 80 basically. And the rough caught my six-iron. It went straight left. Now I'm in the kind of the hay over there short of the green. I'm trying to hit a pitch shot and I swing and it went right under it. Whiffed it. And my wife, my wife has hardly ever watched me golf, but she was behind the green. Took a picture right as I whiffed it. I was like, 'Now, what are the odds of that?' I've played my whole life. You've watched me play like four times and I've whiffed like two shots in my life and that was one of them. And she took a picture of it at Royal Birkdale across the ocean.
Yeah. Now you can remember that shot for the rest of your life, Greg.
Oh yeah. I made a double and I shot 80 and I was not a happy camper when I finished. But I got over it. I had a pint and then I was fine.
Couple pints, couple sips of whiskey, you're good. You're back in the game. You know, little scotch whiskey, you're good. A little scotch or a Guinness or two and life's not beat with a stick. Can't beat it with a stick, right?
Literally. And in your case, literally, you can't beat it with a stick. So, you know,
Can't beat it. No.
All right, man. What's going on in the auction space? You saw a couple sales go through today over the week here. You saw one up in Canada. Ritchie Brothers had a couple things come across there. Talk about what we saw there.
Yeah, Ritchie, of course, been very busy and of course they just purchased a Venator not too long ago. So lots going on. Also recently purchased Blackman Auction. So lots happening with our friends there with Ritchie Brothers. But last Thursday, they had a sale in southwest Saskatchewan. Now I don't mean to offend our friends up there. Me trying to pronounce the name of this town, I'm not even going to try, Casey. I'm just going to say it's a little north-northeast of Havre, Montana, across the line in Saskatchewan. And some really good prices. I thought they had a 24 model John Deere X91000 combine, 457 engine hours. Now it sold with no head, no pickup header. A lot of times up there they sell it with the header, but just the box went for 562,717 when you convert it to US dollars. So that has the highest auction price this year on X91000. You got to go back to last December, kind of that hot end-of-year period. There were a couple snuck in higher than that. But it was interesting. I did also look to see what the average dealer ad is on a 24 model X91000 today. And that number is 638,201 bucks. So hard cash last Thursday, 562,717. Again, it had 457 engine hours. So it wasn't like 200. So, I thought that was indicative of what we've talked about here the last two, three episodes about how good used combines, even late model ones, have kind of strengthened a little bit. I had another proof of that data point last Tuesday. We were filming an auction and where was it? Mount Pulaski, Illinois. Kevin and Kathy Willham were retiring. My friend Mike Moski had the auction. Mike's a great guy. And Kevin had an 18 model S770. I think that's the first year they made those. 18 model, 1818 engine hours, went for 194. And I think the average, I went back and looked at a bunch of 18 models, you know, the last six months, and 194 was quite a bit above, but that was a very nice farm retirement auction. So yeah, used combines have been doing pretty well.
All right, let's talk about this real quick. You and I have our same way of getting the same number but just a different way of getting it. What was the average sale price for the X91000 you're talking about?
Well, if you look, the one on Thursday brought 562,717. Now, if you right now ran an average auction price on all X91000s, it's 42,150 bucks, but that's all model years.
Yeah, the average on the retail side.
Yeah. Well, I looked, I just looked at the 24 models and that average was 638,201. So, to do a fair test, I'd have to find out, you know, average auction on just the 24 models. And maybe I can do that here. If you got just a second, I'll see if I can click.
What was the auction? What was it? Auction 562,800?
562,717. That's what it sold for on Thursday. 24 model, 457 engine hours, no heads. And again, that hard cash, that's the highest in eight months. So again, I just quick looked at it and see what a dealer ad average ad price is on a 24 model, and that was a 638. If you do, you know, my math on that average auction price divided by average dealer ad, that's what I call our machine repeat ratio. That came out to 88.2%, which, you know, pretty smoking. So that's why when I looked at that 562,717, I was like, that seems high, and that was pretty high.
Yeah. So my ratio is 120% auction value. Right. As long as you're below that or at that, you're good. That puts it at 113. So we're, you and I, our math is, I'm at 88%, 80, well, just I'm at 87 and change, right? So we get to the same number, just different way of doing it. So it's,
