Antique Tractors: A Real Investment Vehicle

Skittish about the stock market and credit crisis? There's another place to park your money: collectible tractors. The sector is growing like never before — it has even attracted European investors.

Before a recent auction on a farm near Shelby, Iowa, dozens of old tractors were lined up in a field, ready for the auction block. Some were shiny and restored, others were long unfamiliar with paint. And some of them started right up.

They had names both familiar — John Deere and Case — and obscure, like Oliver and Silver King.

"We started collecting tractors in 1974, and been collecting mostly ever since," said Doreen Wonder, 79. "I love tractors. I'm really a tractor nut."

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Wonder and her husband, both retired farmers, recently started seeing some unfamiliar faces at their tractor collectors club: doctors, lawyers and bankers. The sleepy world of collecting tractors, it seemed, was becoming a high-stakes investment game.

Some of the tractors the couple bought for four figures early on now bring six figures at auction, they said.

The auction brought a good turnout. Auctioneer Lonnie Nixon says that as more and more tractor aficionados got in over the years, prices gradually went up, as they would for any collectors' item not being made any more.

But, he said, prices jumped dramatically in recent years. The reason? Foreign investors.

"The Europeans, because of the exchange rate, if they spend $100,000 that's the same as spending $60,000," Nixon said.

"Any time you have the big old tractors, the Europeans will be there. They buy them and ship them back to Europe."

And, Nixon explained, as the rarer models leave the country, demand grows for the ones that remain.

Ken Eder, a 55-year-old railroad contractor who lives in Carthage, N.C., travels from auction to auction to buy tractors.

One of the new breed of investors, Eder started sinking dollars into old tractors five years ago. He thinks of it as his retirement plan and has seen prices sometimes double in a year. He also collects coins and motorcycles.

"But tractors seem to be about the strongest market right now as far as collection items," Eder said. "You can put your money into it, and you can't lose."

Part of the fun, he says, is going to the shows and meeting people. But you can also drive the tractor around, show it off to your friends — something, he said, that's more difficult with a standard stock portfolio.

In Iowa, the Wonders have boosted their retirement income with a few strategic sales. And the boom has reached a related sector of the economy: Tractor restorers report that business is brisk.

Joyce Russell reports from Iowa Public Radio.

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