[SEL] Re: Unearthing a Horde of Engines

[mullt at att.net]

Jim,

Why do you think an add in the classifieds of a newspaper that servers such an area would not work?

I saw such an add in a paper some time ago, but I don't know what kind of responses he got. I only saw it once.  I have put adds in papers looking for antiques in the past and gotten a few worthwhile responses. You could spend a lot of money on adds before you spend as much as you would driving around knocking on doors.

Tom in St. Louis
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: James Moran <jrmoraninc at yahoo.com>
> AF-
>  To your first point...if these things are  to be found, I would guess that they 
> would be more inclined to be  "buried and rusting away".  After all, that is how 
> I came across  the IHC M.  No "dump sites" as you term it.
>  This part of  upstate/western New York was once heavily committed to  
> agriculture.  As time went by, the suburbs spread out from the  city and the 
> farmers sold off their property, yet retained some small  portion of the land 
> along with the house and barn/outbuildings.   This, of course, is hardly unique 
> to my area.
>  In proximity to my  house such situations abound.  As one drives down some 
> particular  county road,  old, no longer used tractors sit inside of such out  
> structures.  They tend to be McCormicks, For 8n/850's etc., some  Olivers and 
> Massey Ferguson, etc.   To my way of thinking,  such arrangements would also 
> yield some engines that have been  relegated to a dark corner, abandoned years 
> ago but never  discarded.  The folks up this way were largely products of the  
> depression and the mindset was that nothing was ever too broken to  throw away.
>  Of course, I could be very, very wrong.  The only  way to "go at it" (if anyone 
> ever does so) would be to, more or less,  knock on doors and ask the right 
> questions. Running ads in the penny  saver would not work.   As I wrote, 
> tractors and related  implements are all over the landscape.  Does it follow the 
> h-'n-m  would as well?  
>   Just thinking.
>   JM
> 
> fero_ah at city-net.com wrote:  Hi Jim,
> 
> A provocative statement fer sure.  Is this "unearthing" as in a bunch of old
> iron buried and rusting away?  Or is it a dump site for modern aluminum Briggs
> & Strattons?
> 
> Is it one or more of the collectors who started in the hobby in the 50's and
> 60's (when you could buy a running IHC "M" or Hercules or other for $25) and
> who now has a barn full of hundreds of engines?  In this case, those engines
> will most likely enter "circulation" at an auction when the old gent pops his
> clogs and the widow dumps the horde.
> 
> Talk to us Jim.  We need more info before we can get breathless and excited.
> 
> Quoting James Moran :
> 
> > JC...I have a  sneaking suspicion that, if I put my mind (and body) to it, I
> > could  unearth hundreds of engines within (let's just say) a fifty mile
> > radius  of my home.  Should I bother with such an exercise or is it just 
> > better to let these sleeping dogs lie?  Seriously...what do you  feel?
> 
> See ya,  Arnie
> 
> Arnie Fero
> Pittsburgh, PA
> fero_ah at city-net.com
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