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Rare 1970 IHC tractor sold for $56,100

GREG PETERSON 07/12/2012 @ 8:13am Greg Peterson writes "Machinery Pete" column for Successful Farming magazine and appears on the Machinery Show on RFD-TV, talking about trends in the used equipment market

A rare diamond in the rough.

You never know what you’re going to see sell on any given auction. Always interesting to quickly pour through the sale bill listing and just look…every once in a while it happens: “Hmm, now there’s something you don’t see every day.”

This past Tuesday, July 10, 2012, a really, really rare gem of a tractor showed up on a www.Purplewave.com online auction. What was it? A 1970 IHC 2826 tractor with 4,856 hours and a GB 900 loader with 7-foot bucket. It was a government sale for Saline County Road & Bridge. Here’s a picture of the tractor:

So what was so special about this IHC 2826 tractor? There were only 15 ever made according to more than a few IHC collector experts that chimed in our Machinery Pete Facebook page this week. I know I had never seen an IHC 2826 sell at auction before and believe me, I checked and scoured through our “auction results” database at www.machinerypete.com. I found 58,597 sale prices on TRACTORS.

But no prices on IHC 2826s.

Until Tuesday that is. So how high did it sell? The winning bid was $51,000 + a 10% buyer’s premium = total acquisition price of $56,100. The tractor had been purchased new and owned by the Saline County Road & Bridge unit since 1970.

“They paid $9,607 (no loader) for it new back in 1970,” said Darren Fishel of the Saline County Road & Bridge. “It was used to pull a sheepsfoot and a mower. We were pretty surprised what it sold for.”

A quite happy surprise and an unexpected mini windfall for Saline County. There were 30 online bids for the tractor. Opening bids started around $10,000 and zoomed higher from there. Monday evening the high bid stood at $32,000. The sale price jumped nearly $20,000 in the final 45 minutes of the online auction Tuesday morning.

Wow.

Click on the link below to see what other Tractors sold for on Tuesday’s www.Purplewave.com online government auction: