On the heels of a busy week of buying and selling activity on the used farm equipment auction circuit, Machinery Pete recalls a handful of vintage tractors that caught his attention.
For his weekly Pete’s Pick of the Week honor, he picked a tractor (video above) that has been chugging along crop rows for the last 45 years: A 1980 Massey Ferguson 2705 tractor with original paint sold for $19,500 at a consignment auction in Mount Pleasant, Penn. The previous record for that year/model was $18,000.
“You’re buying horsepower, and some people will say that’s nuts to spend almost $20K on a 45-year-old tractor, but then more than half the people will go ‘No, no, no, that’s not nuts. That’s a solid working tractor’,” Machinery Pete says. “If I want to get into anything newer, it’s going to cost a lot more. We keep talking about it - there is so much money going into these solid older machines, and they are going up in value.”
Another record-setting sale took place last Wednesday over in Plano, Ill., at a farm estate auction helmed by Merit Auctions. A John Deere 6115M utility tractor with a loader sold for $107,500. That model’s previous record high was $101,000.
And on Saturday in Dunlap, Tenn., a Farmall M tractor (model year not disclosed) sold for $7,100 at a farm auction. Machinery Pete says it’s the second highest price he can find across over 2,500 Farmall M series transactions dating back decades.
Then there is this funky looking John Deere tractor that spent its days moving snow for a city maintenance department in North Dakota. At an April 15 consignment sale in Ashton, N.D., the 1972 John Deere 4620 with a cab, dual 3400 loader and over 7,000 operating hours sold for $37,975. The machine had been listed for sale for years by the City of Tollstoy for around $10,000. The city finally sent it to auction and received over triple the original price they were looking to get for it.
You can listen to Machinery Pete’s full segment from Monday’s AgriTalk episode here:
Upcoming Auction Action & New Podcast Episode
This week, Machinery Pete himself will be on the scene in Merrill, Wis., to cover the four-day 2025 Spring Auction by Integrity Sales & Auction. The sale kicks off Wednesday and will feature more than 4,000 lots of used ag and construction heavy machinery. You can take a look at the online listings here.
Machinery Pete also has a new podcast episode that dropped over the weekend. You can check that out here:
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