Forward: I am in my early 30's.
Recently, I've been looking for an older pre-war hand start standard tread project tractor. Pickings for such are slim here in rural Michigan - stuff is mostly post war, or row-crop. It seems what I'm looking for has been hoarded in collections, LOL.
Anyways, I follow up on a lead yesterday on a W-30. The fellow selling it is a very well known and revered tractor guy in this state. He probably had 150+ tractors, many very rare.
I get there, and it is very evident that he is a hoarder, probably aged in his 70's, but the type that says he is "saving" stuff, but leaves them outside with open exhausts and such.
He gives me the tour and starts complaining about how there's no younger people in the hobby and in 30 years its all going to be worthless. He goes on and on about how the hobby needs younger people, and how its dying.
So we finally get to the subject W-30. Its partially apart, sitting in the semi-frozen mud, with standing visible water in the open exhaust of the manifold. Parts for it are scattered all over the place in the dirt. Hes like "it will need a little TLC" almost in the tone a used car salesman would use. He had told me he wouldn't want much for it on the phone, just wanted to see it saved... HAHAHA. He shoots me a price of $1500, my jaw drops in disbelief. Literally this thing is worth not much more then iron price. I tell him thats way more then I see in it, and he tells me well to play you gotta pay. I politely tell him thats to high, and we talk about other things. This tractor was not worth much more then iron price. I could use it as a project, but it would have to be priced accordingly to how rough it is.
So I make small talk before I leave and he starts complaining again about how the tractor club hes president of is dying out and there is no young people to fill in. I almost said, well, when a parts-tractor W-30 is $1500 kinda filters out the young people wrenching on stuff. I kept my mouth shut but I had those thoughts. This is not the first time something like this has happened over the years, they complain about no young people or their hobby dying, but they can't see the correlation of their own actions.
Anyways just had to get a rant off my chest. Its his junk and he can do whatever he wants with it, but it was disturbing to me to see so much rare iron that he just has and dosen't even bother to cover the exhausts. He tried to justify it to me saying "well, they'll all need rebuilding anyways".
Also don't complain about no young people in the hobby if a young guy comes around wanting a project and you quote him $1500 for a W-30 on rotten off rims and engine full of water and parts scattered in the frozen mud!
