From Rust To Gold

From Rust to Gold. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

Many years ago I loved spending time on my cousins family farm. We would take off on an afternoon and explore the old barn and shelter belt where we found many rusting hulks of machinery. Little did we know at the time that the rust could easily be turned into gold according to Leslie McManus, editor of Farm Collector magazine.

McMANUS: Well there still are shelter belt pieces to be discovered but it is a diminishing factor. People are buying them from other collectors and junk yards and from estate sales and auctions and that kind of thing and the old diamond in the rough is getting pretty doggone rough if it has been sitting out there for 70 years.

McManus says the appeal is pretty much the same as any collector.

McMANUS: Well for a fair number of people it’s nostalgia for what they experienced as youth growing up on a farm or visiting grand dads farm or just being from a rural community. Certainly there’s the nostalgia of a tractor they can remember form those days but I think for a lot of folks who are, perhaps have a bit of a mechanical bent it’s also a matter of you can still work on machinery that was built up until the 50’s, 60’s 70’s up until the electronics came in.

It was a time when a set of wrenches was sufficient to do most jobs. What kinds of things do people collect?

McMANUS: In terms of popularity, tractors are probably at the head of the list. Not everybody has the space or the mechanical aptitude and those folks will perhaps get interested in antique farm related signs, dealership signs. They’re very hot items. There are people who collect just watch fobs manufactured and given away as premiums by the tractor manufacturers.

McManus says that really pretty much anything farm related can be a collectible and you can find it in Farm Collector magazine.

McMANUS: Well it is absolutely soup to nuts. We really thrive on variety so you will always find features on some aspect of early agriculture. The current issue for example has an article about the corn husking competitions of the 1920’s and 30’s that were a huge spectator sport. We’ll have features on really impressive restorations of equipment.

Visit their website today at www.farmcollector.com.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.