Thank you, Melissa. And thank you, folks, for having me back to Manitoba. Great to be back here. I have to also say thank you for the weather welcome. I'm a Minnesota boy. Grew up in western Minnesota. Got into Winnipeg late last night. Started driving my way west this morning and got out of Winnipeg and of course wasn't snowing, but of course the snow was just firing across what is that? Highway 1 coming over. And it reminded me when I got married back in 1989. My wife Jackie was from Rochester, Minnesota, down in the southeast part of the state. I grew up in the west central part and first time I took her out to my little hometown of Benson, Minnesota and we got out of the area of Rochester, which is about 130,000 people now, and the wind started blowing and she kind of freaked out. She was like, "How do you drive in this stuff?" And I said, "Well, you just got to pick a spot on the road and you'll be okay on the center line or the side." And anyway, good memories for me coming out of Winnipeg this morning. But again, thank you very much for the invitation to come up. I do get asked a lot and actually one of your previous speakers, Scott, on the tech side, was asking me when we were visiting just before I came down. He said, "Pete, I got to ask you, how did you get your start?" And I like to use this as a starting point because first of all, again, thank you guys for following me all these years. But this is how I got started in 1989. Of course, there was no internet back in the late 80s. And like I say, I grew up in a western Minnesota town. My dad was the John Deere dealer in this little town of Benson, Minnesota. He was a third-generation dealer. So I kind of grew up around farm equipment. But I went to college and I was, if you can't tell from the stuff I write and talk about, I'm kind of a numbers guy. So I was an accounting major and got out of college, got married. My wife Jackie got a teaching job in Rochester right at the last minute of fall of '89. So we moved down to Rochester and I was looking for a job and it was right in that one-month window when I was looking for a job when my dad called me one day and he said, "Hey, come back to Benson. There's something I got to show you." So I drove four hours back to Benson. We went down to the Whistle Stop Cafe, our little restaurant in downtown Benson, population 3,200. And dad slid this book across the table to me. And so, I did not actually start the business. It was a banker in Morris, Minnesota named John Bain in 1986, in kind of the middle of the farm crisis, started compiling auction prices for the bank's purpose of valuations.
And John did it for about three years and he had 100 subscribers at 14 bucks a pop. And John had got a promotion and didn't really have time to continue his little business anymore. But my dad as a dealer got this book and we take for granted all the information that's at our fingertips today. But back 35, 36 years ago, information wasn't as available. My dad loved this book and he slid this across the table to me and he said, "This guy's looking to sell. I think there's something here." And he said, "You're 23 years old. You know, I don't know where this could go." So my point here for young people in the audience is listen to your parents. Listen to your grandparents. Ask them a lot of questions because I was just going off the faith. If my dad thinks this is good information, maybe there's something I can do with it. And I just had to set sail and kind of trust my way forward. And I'll give you a little visual example of how I think about my business, the Machinery Pete business. So about a year ago in the Daily Paper back home in Minnesota for me, the Star Tribune, a rural columnist wrote a story about the world's largest ball of twine. I don't know if any of you guys have seen it in Darwin, Minnesota, right on Highway 12. So we grew up with the legend of this ball of twine. And there's the farmer over there that started it. He was a child of the Depression. Grew up in that era where you just didn't waste literally anything. And so every little bit of twine, he just started making this ball. And the point is he never stopped. He spent his whole life and this is what he wound up with. So the writer who wrote this story had a different angle to it than I'd ever seen before. And her point was in our lives, we all start things. We start a lot of things. Might be, hey, I want to lose some weight, I'll start working out, whatever it might be. But how often do we quit? You know, we start something and we quit. Now, what would happen if you never quit? So basically that's me. You know, 36 years ago I started compiling auction prices and I never quit. And the longer you do something, you can't see what it could be 5, 10, 15, 20 years down the road. And again, I was just leaned into it. But when I read that column, I actually started tearing up because again, I was realizing that that's what I've been doing all these years.
Now, again, we've had so much fun over the years. Our TV show, I think it's on RFD TV up here in Canada. Thank you guys for watching. We're just finishing up season 14. We've had a lot of fun. We'll talk about some of the auctions I've been out to recently. But when I was getting ready to come up here, I looked back. I was trying to remember what years I was up here to speak. And I'm sure you guys can relate. Time goes so fast. It was actually 10 years ago I came up here for the first time, 2016. And then I was back 3 years ago. So if you were here then, I wanted to give a little comparison on what the used equipment market was 10 years ago, what it was 3 years ago, and what it is now. And it's quite interesting on the TV side. This is a sale that's taking place tonight, 6:00 online sale in Pocahontas, Arkansas. It'll be on an upcoming episode of the show. I was down there 2 weeks ago. We were filming. And sometimes with these online auctions, we go film in advance, interview the auctioneers, and then when the stuff sells online, then we drop in the price on the show. But this sale tonight, if you want to get a good gauge on how the market is, go to witcherauctions.com. W-I-T-C-H-E-R, witcherauctions.com. And this is the guy, Seth Hill. That's the auctioneer, Kirk Witcher. But these guys, they have a poultry operation. They're into livestock. And they grew rice for 10 years. But they're in an area that's been flooded out like 4 of the last 10 years. So they finally decided, you know, rice, let's just get out of it. Let's refocus our dollars into the poultry and the livestock. So the equipment they have is all one-owner, super low hour. Like this 470 quad, it's got 73 hours on it, 23 model. He's got an R 370, an 8R 340 or 370 with like 790 hours on it. He's got a, I don't know if I have a picture of it. Yeah, there's his air drill. A 24 model, a 550T, 40 foot, never been used. So now, hard cash that'll sell tonight. And that'll tell us, you know, again, kind of a breadcrumb trail, tell us where we're going with this used equipment market. So that's a sale I'm watching there. But again, there was me 3 years ago up here speaking to you guys. And by the way, of all the places I go and speak, this is the best setup I've ever seen with stadium seating here. Only thing would be better if you could serve beer in here. Then we'd get some good questions going, I think. But that was 10 years ago back in 2016. And again, I wanted to kind of look and give you a feel for how the used market has changed. Now, here's a chart. We just call this our Machinery Pete Used Values Index. And it's mostly for the Wall Street crowd, but it's my take based on our data of what's happening with used equipment values. And so, this was 10 years ago. If you look on the far right over there, look at the last half of 13, 14, 15. That was the biggest drop I've ever seen with used farm equipment values in that period. That was coming off of, you know, ethanol, the big push starting late 07 into 08. Price of corn and beans fell spring of 13. Look what happened to auction prices. We started dropping. Now my point here is look how long that drop lasted. It's almost all of 13, all of 14, all of 15, late model used, large late model used equipment. So high-horse tractors, combines, 24-row planters, sprayers, they were falling 18 to 25% year-over-year hard cash at auction, falling like a rock. Okay, that was then.
And here's a picture from back 10 years ago, 2016. Of course, a lot of, most auctions now are just online only. And one little side note, the last 18 months as I travel across the US and Canada, I've had so many people come up to me and say, "Pete, we miss the old in-person auction." Now, there's still a lot of it in the US, especially if you go south, kind of Missouri down south. They like to be in person or out west sometimes. But I miss the lines of cars. And online auction, super efficient. We can sit and bid on our phone. But even when I was a young guy starting out, it didn't take me too long to figure out that the most important thing at the auction is not the machinery that's selling. It's the people you talk to and the things you learn. Might be someone that you don't know. And I think, I think if I could advise politicians across the world, I think what they need to do now is just all come with me to an auction sometime and, you know, have a hot dog and chill out and just listen to people. You know, God gave us two ears and one mouth. So when you go to an auction, you can learn a lot just by listening. So I kind of miss those days. But now here, that was 10 years ago. Okay. Now, when I was here last 3 years ago, January of 23, it was the complete opposite. We were at the absolute top of the used farm equipment market that I've ever seen in my 36 and a half years. So, here's my chart. And again, here's the end of 22. On my 1 to 10 scale, we were 9.9. We couldn't get any higher. Now, if you remember back in 21 and 22, we had the tightest supply of used equipment ever with dealers. And coming out of the pandemic, there was the whole supply chain issue. So, if you wanted a new planter or a new combine, you had to get on a list. And when it showed up at an auction, it was Katie bar the door. Stuff was just going through the roof. And here's a picture from an auction we filmed for our TV show. It was December 5th of 2022. It was in Hamlin, Iowa. It's kind of west central part of the state. And I think that the month of December 22, right before I was up here 3 years ago, that was the absolute top of the used equipment market. And this particular farmer, that line of tractors, it's the only time I've ever seen it. He had every 20 series. He had a 8520, 84, 83, 82, 8120, all in a row. All low hour, just beautiful machines. And at the other end of the row was a 8120. That's where when the auction truck came around, that's where it started. And I think 4 out of those 5 sold for record high prices. When we got to the 8220, which was second in the line, it sold for, I think, I don't know, it was like 182 or something like that. A guy tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around, I recognized him, but I couldn't place his name. And he had the biggest smile on his face you could have. And I said, "Sir, I know you." And he goes, "Well," he said, "you filmed an auction in Williams, Iowa in 2017, and I bought a lower-hour 8220 on that sale." And I forget the exact number, but this one sold for like $60,000 more 5 years later. So if you want to talk the importance of timing, he bought right here and right there was at the absolute top. So sometimes when I look at these charts and when we get into a down period, it's really, to me, if you're able, you'll never have a better chance to get good value on your used equipment buys, whether that's at the dealer or an auction, because there's sort of been this magic rule. If you do what I've done for 36 years, especially with tractors, but also with combines, once they get to be about 10 years old and they're in good shape with lower hours, then it's all suddenly like everybody wants them because the gap between the new cost of a tractor or a new combine or a new planter is so high that that nice 10-year-old one just becomes super attractive. And then if you get a period like here, 21 to 23, when there's money in the system, they just go crazy. But if you can get a low-hour 3- to 7-year-old item, tractor in particular, tractor or combine, right now our data has told me for 36 years that's the place to be aggressive, 3 to 7 years old. Because if you get a, say, a nice 4-year-old low-hour tractor, take good care of it, in a few years you're going to have a 10-year-old tractor with low hours that if you want to trade that in or sell it private, you're going to have what everybody wants. And when we go around the country now, in the US, there's a lot of older farmers retiring. The number of auctions, my data was showing up 4.5% in 2025, and it might be up more in 26 because you've kind of got 2 things going on. You've got at the top end, I just turned 60, but guys older than me retiring, stop the equity drain. And then on the lower end, you know, the other part, you've got younger farmers or people who are renting ground and the lending pressure is getting squeezed. So we're just getting more auctions. But again, that 3- to 7-year-old spot, great value there when you can get that stuff low hours.
Okay, so I mentioned being here 3 years ago. That was January of 23. When we got to 2024, that was one of the most amazing years I've ever seen because dealers, I've never seen that level of aggressiveness taking equipment out to auction. We saw a 150% jump from 23 to 24. 0- to 3-year-old tractors, combines, sprayers, planters taken out and sold at auction. And it was all dealers because they had too much late-model stuff. And when corn and beans fell, they were kind of stuck. And now they're paying 8% interest. And if you were a dealer like my dad back in the day, you had 2 stores and then they had 4 stores. And when the market turned, you maybe had, you know, 10 or 12 too many combines stuck on your lot. Well, now if you're a dealer and you got 60 stores or 80 stores and you have 100 too many combines or 150 too many tractors or planters, whatever, and these things are on your books for 500, 600,000 bucks and you're paying 8% interest. That's why we saw an ocean sold at auction in 24. Just unbelievable. And what I saw for pricing was exactly what I saw back in late 13, 14, 15. Same exact percentage, about 18 to 25% drop in the auction price in 24 on the late-model stuff. And here's some data again. This is the number of like new to 3-year-old units sold at auction in 24. And you can see here in this column the jump versus the year before in 23. But I really want to draw your attention to this column right here. I went into our Machinery Pete data and I looked back at 2014, kind of about year 1, year 1 and a half of the biggest downturn I ever saw. And look how much more aggressive dealers were selling at auction. 250% increase versus 10 years ago. And you say, well, why is that? Well, the reason is, let's stop and think about just for a minute the realities with the dealer network versus 10 years ago. All this consolidation that we've seen over the last 10, 15 years, these dealers now are so big and they're just capitalized at a level like they've never been before. So they could in essence take the hit in 24 and they got bloody taking that stuff to auction, but they had to move it again because they're paying 8% interest. A decade ago in 13, 14, 15, dealers maybe were like my dad had 4 stores. And even if they wanted to move that stuff back then, they couldn't because they frankly would have been out of business. So it fostered a hold and hope strategy. Wait for better days. Now, as a farmer, that was good because in the tough times you could get some good used equipment deals on the lot. For the whole equipment sector as a whole, it was not a good thing because it created this stickiness or this late-model used stuff got stuck on dealer lots. And at the manufacturer level, if you're Deere or AGCO, you didn't like that. You got to keep this stuff moving. That's why they wanted dealers to get bigger and bigger and bigger over the last 15, 20 years. And again, it's kind of an emotional topic. As farmers, we don't like to lose competitors, other dealers, but it kind of is what it is. But this is what I saw now in 2025. Okay, huge drop-off in the 0- to 3-year-old stuff sold at auction. Look, tractors down 51%, combines down 52%, planters down 43%, sprayers down 29%. Now, you got to remember, I just said the number of auctions went up 4.5% last year. So we got more auctions but less late-model stuff hitting the auction market. That was because dealers pulled back. They got so bloodied in 24, they just like, we got to take a breath, and they did a lot of that hard work. And so to me, the bullseye, the pressure point in the ag space in 24 felt to me like it was on dealers. And then last year it shifted to farmers in 25 because you guys, I mean, it's corn and beans where they are and the input costs that you're faced with and the cost of machinery, everything. It's just tough outside of the livestock sector, which has been, you know, thankfully had a good run here. So all this stuff is swirling together and this is kind of the update right now. And if you follow my stuff in Farm Journal or on our TV show or social media, again, here's my chart again, goes back 25 years to 2001. I would point out 2004, hard to remember now why used equipment values jumped that much back then, as it wasn't corn and soybean price. It was China. That's kind of when China was becoming modern China. Their appetite for steel was so insatiable that the cost of grain trailers and grain carts and everything started to shoot up and that pulled up on the value of used equipment. So we were seeing auction prices go straight up. Then you got to 07, of course, ethanol late 07 took off, stayed up there, high level. If you go out to the far end into 25, what I saw last year was after the big drop in 24, we leveled off starting in late February and auction pricing quit dropping. So my big point here is this. The biggest downturn I ever saw was back here 13, 14, 15. That took 3 years for used values to fall and kind of quit falling and find some footing early in 16. This time it took 1 year, 2024. Combines, you could argue it took 2 years, 23 and 24, but tractors basically took 1 year. So that's what's different about the farm equipment space now. It's more efficient. It's more like the used automobile space, honestly. And I did read a stat the other day they came out with and said in the US the average age of vehicles on the road is 12.8 years, which is an all-time record high. And when I read that, I said, that's exactly what I'm seeing in the used farm equipment market. People are stretching out the age of your fleet. So if you're not buying new, and new sales have been, outside of livestock-related equipment, have been just brutal. 2024, 25, 26 is off to a tough start. You're not selling new. You guys got to farm the acres you got to farm. I think that's why we started to see at the very end of 25 even a little, not just stabilizing, but a little uptick in November and December. So really, really interesting, and it's the first time in my 36 years I've ever seen this where auction pricing on good stuff is going up a little bit and new sales are not happening. Every other time I've seen auction pricing go up, that's been a great, you know, that means new tractors, new planters, all that stuff is selling. It's the first time I've ever seen it where they've been disconnected. And really, one of the big reasons is just how high the cost of new has gotten. I mean, those price increases we saw coming out of the pandemic in 21, 22, 23, 15 to 25% plus increases of new equipment every year. It got to the point when exactly 1 year ago I wrote a column for Farm Journal and I sort of stated it kind of gently, but I was like, have we hit the end of the rainbow? I mean, can new costs go up anymore? Can it, I mean, can it be, can you guys as farmers make it work? And I don't know. I think what we're seeing now is farmers voting with their checkbook saying, you know what, I'm going to take a breather on the new stuff and I think my focus is going to be on to find a good used option. And the other interesting thing I'm starting to hear farmer chatter when I go around and cover all these auctions and I'm on social media every day smashing away and thank you guys for following. It seems to me like farmers are starting to assess. They're like, "Well, when my dad was 45 years old, how much equipment did he have on the farm and how much do I have?" And we have like a lot more than dad or my grandpa had. And there's obviously, you know, it's hard to find good help. There's tons of great reasons, but to me, we're at this kind of inflection point where maybe things are changing long term. And so we'll have to see how it all plays out. But yeah, again, that to me is the biggest change I've seen. That last downturn was 3 full years of slow new sales and dealers trying to get out from the excess late-model used on their lot. And this time it took 1 year. So if you're a farmer, this is what I wrote a year ago. I advise gently, like I said before, listen to your dad, listen to your grandpa. This might be 1 place you might have to pivot a little bit because all those hard-earned lessons of your dad and your grandpa and your uncle and your grandma through all those ups and downs they did in ag. When we hit a down patch, the rule was the dealers always had too much used on their lot. So you could get a really good deal. You probably couldn't trade your stuff in for much, but if you had cash, whatever, you could get a good deal. Now it's different now. And the thing we're starting to see take shape is with these low levels of new sales in 24 and 25 and 26 is shaping up to be another really tough year for new equipment sales on the big ag side. This is starting to have an effect on the used market because there just weren't many 25 models sold. And as this drags on, for example, 3 times in the last 2 months when I've been out at auctions, I've had used equipment dealers come up to me. Now, these are good jockeys, whatever you call people that buy and sell used equipment. They've come up to me and I didn't bring it up. And they told me, said, "Pete, I think before too long, we're going to have a shortage of good used equipment." That 5, 6, 7, 8, 10-year-old stuff that a lot of folks like to buy in that area. Because again, at the top end of the funnel, there's just nothing coming in on the new stuff. So it's going to really, it's all tied together, the new and the used. It always will be. But again, these are the 2 big reasons why the whole space is so much more efficient now. Again, the dealer consolidation and on the right, of course, the growth of online bidding. We've had online bidding and auctions for 20, 25 years. But what I saw was that when the pandemic hit March of 20, that it changed everything on the auction market because most, frankly, most auctioneers are my age or up. I'm 60 and they were pretty scared because that March in the US is like April up here. That's the busiest auction month. And boom, we had all these shutdowns and the whole auction space pivoted to online only. And corn and beans hadn't shot up in price. But I'm the scorekeeper guy watching all these prices. And March, 3rd week of March of 20, auction prices start to go up and I was like, there's no reason for this. But people were cooped up. They're all on their phone and I think we just in essence jumped the shark tank and the whole space got really comfortable with, okay, if I see what I want in Oklahoma, doesn't matter if I'm in Manitoba, that's what I need. And that was right as used equipment was tightening up on the dealer lots. So you just, if you needed it, you clicked it, you bought it. And once you get comfortable, everyone gets comfortable with that, then there's no going back. And I think that's again made the space a lot more efficient. Again, cost of new, again down 3 years in a row, not selling anything new. And again, that cost of new is just so breathtakingly high. I'll be really interested to see at the manufacturer level in 26 down to dealers if there's any discounting. You know, if you're not selling new, at what point do you try to push that button? And I think it's the last button they want to push because they're trying to protect that new price point. But it's been interesting almost on the dealer side. I've never seen this before either in 24. It was almost when I would talk to my dealer friends, it was almost like they didn't even want to sell anything new. It's like, our focus is on getting rid of this 1, 2, 3-year-old stuff that's stuck on our lot. We got to move this stuff. And that voice got so loud that those dealers pushed up to the manufacturers like Deere and these big dealers now with 50, 60, 80 stores were almost semi-dictating to the manufacturer, to Deere, like, "Dudes, you got to help us here. You got to, whatever, pool funds or whatever, you got to help us move this stuff." And they did. I've never seen that level of activity from the manufacturers, which I think was smart on their part. But anyway, the whole space is just different now. And again, that's back to my point about your grandpa might have said, "Hey, if you get in a 2, 3, 4-year patch where profits are low, you know, just focus on used, there'll be an ocean of used equipment. You'll get a good deal." And I'm starting to see like that won't be true anymore. It's just different. Now, that was my point about the automobiles, 12.8 years in the US. And again, you guys know the cost of a pickup or an SUV, it's the same thing. It's like, oh my god, it's 100,000. And it's just that the price just got so baked into everything, it just took off. And then does it ever come down? Equipment costs? I don't know. Well, you would think it would come down, but we'll see. And again, my point about farmers starting to assess, man, how much equipment do we have? And this has led to 1 thing that I've never seen before on the farm auction front. You know, it used to be you'd have a retirement sale or an estate sale, right, for farm auction and then of course consignments and dealer auctions online. But now we're seeing farmer downsizing sales all over the US and up here too, or farmers taking maybe 7 pieces to a big weekly online auction, Big Iron, Purple Wave, whatever, Ritchie Brothers. And a lot of that's to keep the lender happy. So that farmer downsizing auction...
Has become a big thing. Again, there's my point about the first time we've ever seen this. I was actually just talking to Ty Morgan this morning about this for US Farmer Board. She was like, 'Greg, what's your assessment on the used equipment market now?' And I said, 'Well, Ty, I've never seen this before where good condition used is going up a bit when new is just in the tank.' So, we'll see.
Again, what I started to see end of '25 was a little jump. So, this tractor in the foreground here was a '21 model KH Maxim 150. Now, this sold on an auction November 20th. And I think this sale was in western Iowa. I can't remember the name of the town, but a younger auction had the sale. Very nice tractor. Had 1,500 hours on it with a loader. And I was there. I took that picture. I was filming it. About 135,000 bucks. Now, it's the record ever on a Maxim with a loader. And that day, November 20th, if Farm Journal would have given me five or eight pages of the magazine, I could have wrote stories about what I saw around the country on November 20th. And that was really when stuff started to take off.
Couple weeks before that, this tractor sold. It's obviously a different market, the vintage stuff, but this was on John Kinsenb's collector sale. We filmed for our TV show. So, I think it was November 6th, November 4th, but we were sitting with John when this sold online. And again, you can see the sale price. 50,250 bucks. A lot of times people ask me, 'Pete, how are things in the collector market?'
Not too bad. Not too bad. Also, what is the collector market? When I started, the word antique meant A's and B's and H's and M's and that kind of stuff. So now this tractor, I mean, my hair is getting grayer and I'm 60 years old. This thing, what, from the '70s or late '60s? It's kind of spooky to think it's almost 60 years old. But again, there was no question that was a John Kinsenb premium on that. But you know, it's a little indicative, I think, here on the collector side when you hear people talking about the K-shaped economy.
Here, you know, in the news, usually they're talking about US or Canadian economies K-shaped, and you're like, 'Well, what the hell are they talking about?' The K has two legs coming out of it, right? One that goes up, one that goes down. And in agriculture, the K-shaped economy is absolutely real. And if you're my age or up and you, you know, you have a strong balance sheet, those folks are paying, they're writing these checks and they're the ones who are going to be buying down in Arkansas tonight on this loader stuff. On the other side of the K is younger farmers and farmers who are renting ground and just the lending pressure is increasing. And so we've got multiple realities happening at the same time. Like a lot of farmers, when I post this stuff about an auction price selling for whatever, I could tell it's frustrating because they're like, 'Well, who's writing that check?' But again, if you're older, your balance sheet's stronger, and that's why the price of land hasn't dropped because people with money are keeping it pretty high.
Just a few other recent examples. That same day, November 20th, this 8285R, this came out of Ohio, Hilliard, Ohio, 1,380 hours, 221,000 bucks, fifth highest ever, highest in 21 months. That was a very common data point I was getting in November and December and even into January here. When you see a nice item like this, you know, it should bring a premium, but it's arcing back almost to what we saw back in '21 and '22.
And here's a — this was up this way. I think Shackleton Auctions over in Ontario had this sale. Mike, great outfit over there. Not sure how you pronounce that. Kamli, Ontario, November 20th. But again, '13 model, 299 hours, 204,200 US. That's the highest auction price ever on that model over 2,500 hours. And again, note how old it is. Okay, it's 12 years old. So, there's that kind of that magical 10-year-old mark I was telling you about. If you get out to 10 years old with low hours, good shape like this, you got dynamite. You got what everybody wants.
And you almost have to be careful, like if you're going to sell it. I'm not advising to overprice your item, but just pay attention to what this stuff is doing because it's easy to think, 'Well, times are tough. Yeah, I'll list it for 180.' You can see what they do.
This sprayer was unbelievable. This was November 22nd. If you get down into tobacco country, here's a '99 model. A little under 6,500 with what, $3,800 on it. Brought $50,000. Highest I've ever seen. So, I post a picture on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and you know, half the audience goes, 'That's ridiculous. Who would pay 50,000 for that?' But then the tobacco guys chime in and they go, 'Well, understand that they don't make this anymore.' And this also at that price point, 50,000. We're not talking about writing a check for a quarter million. So, there's more people that want this stuff. And that's, you know, that's why it brought 50K.
December 3rd. Another example here. Big 9560R. This is in southwest Minnesota where I live. 46 hours. Stefest group sold this one, 276K. There's that data point again. Highest in 33 months. Started to see that a lot.
I covered a sale down in Clinton, North Carolina. And I went to this sale. Couple reasons. One, the auctioneer, Jason AOX, awesome guy. He said, 'Pete, you got to come down for this.' But I had five late model Fents. And I was like, okay, this will be interesting because Fents are really interesting right now on the tractor side. There's a ton of interest, ton of interest. So when you see good low-hour ones on the used market, it was like, okay, let's find out. And if you go to the far end down there, I think that was a 936, low hours. I think it went for 285 or 285,500. Highest one I've ever seen. Next to it, I think it was an 828. Same thing. Higher than I thought. Next to that were 2724s. One with a loader. The loader went for 245. Hard cash. Higher than I thought. All these sold with warranty.
And you wouldn't believe how many people when I was on the ground that day coming up to me, and I'm not involved with the auction company, but they're going, 'Pete, is there warranty on these things?' And there was. So, that's one little side point I would offer. If you are ever selling anything privately or you're having an auction and you have warranty on your whatever, you have to put that right at the top of your listing before you say anything else. Warranty. Two years left. Extended warranty. If you don't, it'd be like you have a beautiful neon sign and you just buried it. You got to hit people over the head with the fact that you got warranty because they're not buying new right now. And you've got a really nice used item with warranty and it's just like a beacon right now. And that's I think why these things all sold for a premium.
Okay. I covered a sale in Indiana, December 12th, right kind of east of Indianapolis. Big two-day consignment. Again, very strong auction. This New Holland BC 5070, '22 model, went for 27K. Second highest auction price ever. Now, of course, you drift into the hay forage end, particularly round balers, square balers, tedders, that the strength in the livestock the past couple years has made really active bidding on good condition used hay equipment. And we saw it right there at 27K.
Now, of all the pieces I saw sold last year at auction, this is probably the one that got the most chatter, and it was December 16th, Ashley, North Dakota. You guys might know Almer Auction Service. Great company. They had this sale and you can see it's an '07 Pete 379. 20,817 actual miles. 280,000 bucks it brought. And I posted that, and if you go to our website, machinerypete.com, all the auction prices are free. We want you to hop in there and look at stuff before you buy, sell, and trade. Again, that's the highest I've ever seen on a Pete 379. But the buying interest in it was so palpable getting out into those earlier emission trucks, that's what people want and that's what they paid, 280.
But I'm also seeing at the end of '25 strengthening on the late model stuff, which you know is a little surprising. Now this one came from up here. It was a team auctions had a consignment sale middle of December, I think 16th, and they had equipment some from Alberta, some from Saskatchewan. I think this was from Cut Knife, Saskatchewan, but I'm not positive. But it was the first AF11 that I've seen at the auction market, and you guys up here sell them with the heads, the pickup headers. In the US we kind of don't do that, but converted to US, I think it was 1,157,000 Canadian. So the math was 841 and change US, and that just blew away the highest auction price I've ever seen on any combine ever.
And that same sale they sold this X91100, a little higher — well no, 93 engine hours on it with the pickup header went for 650 and change US. I think that's the second highest ever auction on X911. It did have the pickup header, but same sale. I had this grain cart, you know, '24 model, 2598, US 184,658. Highest auction price ever on a grain cart. Now, what you got to remember here is, okay, here's a '24 model grain cart. Now, what's the asking price on a '26 model? They're still up here. They're not dropping. So, and now how many new have been sold the past couple years? So when this one shows up, this is in essence why my dad told me this was good information 36 years ago because we can have opinions about things. And honestly, I would tell you every single farm auction I've ever gone to for 36 years, someone has come up to me at that sale and said, 'Pete, these prices, oh, they were terrible, weren't they?' That's why I've compiled all this stuff so that you can take the emotion out of it and go in and look at all the Brent 2598s and go, 'Okay, three similar ones just brought X. This one's up or this one's down.' Just take the emotion right out of it.
So, there's one other record on that same sale. This 7130 Premium. So, here you're pre-DEF with the loader, $1,400 — about 138 and change US. Highest I've ever seen. So that was one auction up here December 16th. So again, that's kind of what we're seeing. But here's a fun one for you and then I'll pivot and we'll try and take some questions. But I was in Nebraska doing a preview for my friend Adam Marshall. It's in the south central part of the state, Kearney, Nebraska. And he had this on the sale, a 1999 CPM Ranch, 16,700 miles on it. And I said, 'Adam, what the hell is that? It looks like a truck and a tractor got busy.' And it brought, you can see it brought 41,750 bucks. Pretty cool.
But my one point I'll leave you with there is that we went to Adam and did a preview of the auction. So, I just take my cell phone and we walk and talk. And one other last little advice I would give you when you're selling something privately or at auction on the front end, if you want to make it pop, shoot a little video of you standing by it. Get the whole thing, the whole tractor in the background or the whole whatever, and just pretend like you're talking to your buddy and say, even talk to me. Say, 'Hey, Pete, this is my Freightliner FLD 120. I bought this, you know, whatever, 10 years ago from Smith Implement.' That video, when we post that on social media, you know, whatever, we have 420,000, I don't know, some followers, whatever. But when they see you stand by it and talk about it, it changes things. It's more personal. It's not just some truck. It's your truck. It's your tractor. And when I on the back end watch what happens to the auction prices when we do these preview videos, they go up. So really, I think we're on the front edge of this.
In fact, if I were a farm equipment dealer, what I would do is when you traded anything into me, I would go out and film it on your farm, you standing by it, and I would say, 'By the way, do you have any video of that? Any cell phone video of that thing combining or your planter planting? Because I need that because it makes it worth more money.' So film your stuff when you're planting and harvesting because it'll pay off.
Okay, we'll just zoom through to the end here. Again, so many examples. A lot of this pre-DEF stuff, you know, 134,000 on an 8320. Just saw it. Again, second highest auction price ever on this S760 couple weeks ago, January 10th. That is one thing I would say is that when the calendar flipped to January, sometimes in the past we've seen a little backup because in the US, you know, I don't know tax law up here, but in the US Section 179, you get tons of buyers November and December, they want to minimize their tax bite, and when the calendar flips, it's like, will that hold or will it not? And so far what we've seen, it's holding very strong like that one.
And here's just a visual on the supply issue of used equipment. So, this particular chart is on combines and this chart goes back two years. So, over here is early '24. The blue line is dealer supply on their lots for sale. The orange line is you guys shopping for combines at machinerypete.com. So, look at that blue line, but look what's been happening the last year. Down. And that is going to be the problem in the next two, three years, I'm afraid, is that the supply is tightening up. And I think whenever corn and beans do go up and stay up for a little bit, I hate to say it, but I think what we're going to have is 2021 all over again. Or if you want the planter, they only got eight and you need to decide by 10 o'clock this morning if you want your name on it. And that price ain't backing up, it's going up. So, those are some of the things I'm seeing.
But before we wrap up, anybody have any questions? I know it's throwing a lot of information at you. There, a lot of graphs and stuff, but again, thank you guys so much for following all these years. I'll stick around a little bit up top if you want to visit or have any questions, but again, Melissa, thank you so much for having me down.
