Welcome to Moving Iron with Casey Seymour and Greg Peterson, the podcast for anyone and everyone involved and interested in the business of ag 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. We've got Greg Machinery Pete Peterson on to talk about what's happening in the world of equipment. And this edition of Moving Iron podcast is brought to you by John Deere. Greg, how are you doing this morning?
I'm doing well, Casey. How are you?
Doing good, man. Doing real good. We're in that peak time right now going into August, and that's just that pre-harvest time. You start looking as the stuff rolls through various auctions and what have you. And there's some of that stuff that's happening right now. Yeah, obviously there's some guys in the south that are picking corn, those kind of things. But as you start moving through crop tour time and all those kind of things, as you start watching that thing happen, you're starting to see the auction market start to heat up, and that's typically when you see August start to kick in.
Yeah, you know, dog days of summer here. Moving into mid-August. Good amount of activity. A little bit higher than we've seen past years. That's kind of been true all of 2026, like we've talked about before. The number of machinery auctions has been up. It was up close to 20% through like mid-May. Maybe not quite that much now, but still up.
And yeah, I mean what I saw last week, Casey, same trend. You know, it's all about condition and a reaction to, you know, obviously the price of new equipment is pretty high. So farmers' kind of collective mindset looking for the best condition used. So, you know, I mentioned before we started recording a couple examples just caught my eye from the past week. I know our friends at Merit Auctions had a large — well, I shouldn't say large — but online dealer auction, no reserve, for Ag Pro. Of course, great John Deere dealer with that geographic footprint up into the eastern Midwest and to Ohio and then of course down into the Southeast, but most of all this equipment was from Ohio, pretty much 95% of it. Their pre-harvest auction. Got some pretty good numbers on that, strong pricing. So things like a '22 model John Deere X9 1000 combine, 654 engine hours with emission warranty out until mid-September of '27 or 3,000 hours, it brought 450, which I know it can sound like, my gosh, that sounds like a really low number, but this is a '22 model, so four years old, and the fact is that's the highest auction price in eight months on a '22 model X9 1000. So I thought that was pretty good.
And it could sell itself, too. That's the other thing about it. That's impressive, very good. It's a dealer consignment sale.
Right. Exactly. So I think, yeah, right. So there's always been, you know, 36, 37 years covering this stuff. It's sort of why going way back before the internet, Casey, we put out our auction price book. And I was a 23-year-old kid, what did I know, but even back then I knew you can provide the data, like, okay, this combine brought X. So I guess back in 1989, what was I reporting on? Maybe like Titan IIs and stuff like that. But uh...
Exactly. They weren't selling for 450, I'll tell you that.
But we always included what type of auction it was. So we had a little notation: farm auction, consignment auction, dealer auction. Of course, there were no online auctions. Nobody was online then. But you're right, to see a stronger price like that from a, you know, quote-unquote wholesale auction, it tells you things about the market. And also on that auction last Thursday was a '20 model S780 John Deere combine, 1,347 engine hours. It came from Tiffin, Ohio. Of course, now Ohio, when I chart my numbers, that northern half, especially north central, northwest Ohio, is probably the highest resale area. It just is. But anyway, this '20 model S780, 1,347 engine hours, went for 245. And so, you know, that's the highest auction price on a '20 model in the same deal in eight months going back to December. So I thought that was pretty strong there. And then the day before that, last Wednesday, August 5th, our friends at Big Iron, they had a little kind of a mid-size farm retirement auction within their big auction. And this was for the Van Langen farm retirement auction out of Ellsworth, Iowa. And some really strong prices on some slightly older equipment here, Casey. Just some examples, like they had a 2014 John Deere 635FD draper. Now, it did sell with a Stud King 38-ft trailer, so we got to factor that in, an auxiliary aerial. Okay, but 64,750 bucks for a 12-year — I mean, it's 12 years old.
I had to go back three years to find any '13 to '15 model sold with a trailer that sold that high. So I thought that was strong. They also had a '17 model 608C corn head, so eight-row corn head. 50,500 bucks.
That was the one that was most impressive to me. That's a, you know, it's an eight-row corn head. I mean, not that they're obsolete by any means, but you don't see a lot of eight-row corn heads, which is probably why it brought 50,500 bucks, you know.
It's a — yeah, I had to go back 20 months to find a 608C that had a December of '24. But down the line on that sale, they had a, you know, a '17 model Rhino 6200 20-ft bat wing mower for 19,000 bucks. So nine-year-old bat wing mower for 19,000. I mean, that's...
I don't know if it cost that much new.
That's a good check. Now, again, the description is very important. It did have a set of unused blades and arbor bolts with it, but I mean, still 19,000 bucks is very strong. And now let's see what else on that sale. Oh, a 2008 White 8816 1630 planter for 54,750. So I think again, good condition stuff. And again, that gap between what a new one costs and what a nice, you know, six- to seven-year-old one...
I covered a sale Saturday, filmed a YouTube video up by Hastings, Minnesota. It was a farm retirement auction for — what was the guy's name? Gene. I apologize, Gene, I can't remember your last name right now. Nice fellow. But it was by Houghton Auction Service and slightly older stuff. But he had a Case IH MX200. It was an '09. You know, like 7,915 hours on it. Went for 87,500. That's like the fourth highest ever on an MX200. Now, you don't see a ton of those. But the real kicker on that sale, Casey, was they came around with the trucks. Grain trucks. And they had a pair of International 9200s, an '06 and an '07. Both with 21-ft load line steel boxes. One of them had 349,126 miles. The other had 448,100. And they're selling them choice. So my experience with selling choice has been it's a pretty good indicator when the used market is heating up. A lot of times buyers will take both. And Todd Houghton called it, you know, it took like six minutes to sell these things. Bidding was bouncing all over the place. And at first one, well, he said sold 84,750, which, you know, I thought, you know, for 20 years old, pretty good hard cash number there. And it took about two seconds and, yep, buyer takes both. So twice the money, 84,750 times two. So...
Yeah, two times the money.
Somewhere else there was also another auction. This — I know what it was. It was the same day. It was Saturday. People got a big kick out of this. I posted it on social, some pictures. So I was up in Hastings, Minnesota, but our friends at Sweeney Auction Service out of Waukon, Iowa, they had quite a farm auction. It was for two brothers that had passed, two twins, Marvin and Melvin. I apologize, I can't remember their last name, but the sale was in Lawler, Iowa. And it was — I don't know if it was the name of their farm — it said IH Country Farm Estate Auction. And Marvin and Melvin were red guys their whole life. And I mean, they had some interesting items on that auction. But I talked to Penny Sweeney. It was Monday morning. I said, 'Penny, I hear you had quite the auction Saturday.' And now, no internet bidding.
Really interesting. But they had over 1,500 people at the auction. People were pinging — I was up in Hastings and people were pinging me like, 'Pete, the crowd here is just nuts.' But on that sale, they had two International 3088s. One was open station. And I don't know if they sold them choice, but the second one had much higher hours, I think. And I think it was one of those deals where again, the second one just went higher. So that first one's gone. There's only one left. So that's always been another Machinery Pete little deep-cut auction bidding tip: is buy the first one.
Yeah, the second one always is more expensive.
Second one goes for more money.
But on that sale, they had a great sale. They had a — I said a record on an International 3288, which of course you don't see many of those. But I think it brought 36,000 bucks. Low hours, was 3,000-some hours on it. And they had a 5288 two-wheel drive go for 39,000 bucks. I think that was a top fiver. And a 1979 Ford F-150 Indy 500 pace car edition with 10,170 miles on it. That brought 35,000 bucks.
That does remind me of one other item on the Hastings, Minnesota auction, a pickup, an '01 Chevy 2500 HD with like 36,000 miles on it. And you could tell — you could always tell when people kind of crowd in, it's like, 'Oh, I came for this pickup.' And that brought like 27,750, I think was the number there. So cool to see a, you know, almost 30-year-old pickup approach 30k.
