May is normally a slow-down zone for used equipment auctions, but today there is ample activity taking place in the market. The heightened action is due to the COVID-era expansion of online equipment auctions.
“Conditions for new (equipment) are still soft, and it’s just a challenging time overall, but I would say through the month of May good (condition) used is doing surprisingly well,” says Machinery Pete.
Casey Seymour, who has over 20 years of dealer lot experience, says there is more buying activity on used sprayers than he normally sees this close to summer spraying season.
Machinery Pete agrees, and he has sales data to back it up. Pete shares three recent auction transactions that demonstrate ascending farmer interest (and price upside) in application equipment:
A 2022 John Deere 410R sprayer (347 hours, shown above) brought $362,000 at a DPA auction in Illinois. The average 2025 auction price on a 410R is $353,000, up 10% from last year. Meanwhile, the average dealer price is well over $400,000.
A 2022 Case IH Patriot 4440 sprayer (1,059 hours) brought $210,500, which is the second-highest auction price on a ’22 4440 this year.
A 2023 AGCO RoGator 1300C (2,300 hours) brought in $125,500 at an auction in Texas.
A look at the current supply and demand forces at play in the market was another topic of discussion. According to Seymour, used combines and sprayers are up in supply and demand, while row crop tractors and used planters are down.
“I’m anticipating an even bigger end of the year auction cycle than what I anticipated, and I was already anticipating it being pretty big,” Seymour adds.
Pete agrees with that take as well, adding things are “much healthier” this year in terms of dealer inventory. Last year, he recalls, many dealers pushed a large chunk of used machines onto the auction market out of sheer necessity, as the machines weren’t selling fast enough and inventories were too high.
“If I’m a dealer and I have some excess, I’d feel pretty darn good about tiptoeing it out onto the auction market if I have to,” Pete says.
Here Come the Combines
Aaron Fintel, used equipment specialist for 21st Century Equipment, says farmers in his area are either finished with spring planting or very close to being done. That often means more slow days at the equipment dealership.
“We had a second half of February into March and April with pretty good traffic and pretty good (buying) action,” Fintel said. “As quiet as the market was before that, it’s that quiet after, too.”
One machine class that is “very slowly waking up” in his area is used combines, Fintel says. Seymour adds that he expects more new combines to move ahead of fall harvest, and that will result in a bump in used combine inventory on dealer lots. Trade-ins will be the primary factor bumping those used harvester inventories up, he thinks.
Seymour and Fintel then take a deep dive into dealer inventory data from 2023 up until May 19 of this year. The data showed row crop tractor inventories are down 585 units year over year, but Fintel believes the market will bounce back soon with a wave of new tractors hitting dealer lots from the factory.
“What I like to see, and it’s a good indicator of (segment) health, is it’s not about the number of machines — it’s are they moving or not,” Fintel said. “And right now, they’re flowing in nice and healthy, but then there’s a trickle on the back end.”
Seymour also chats with Blue Reef Agri-Marketing’s Chip Nellinger and John Deere’s Josh Ladd, who talks about Deere’s portfolio of precision technologies for crop sprayers.
Want the full story? Head over to YouTube to watch this week’s Moving Iron Podcast episode.
