farm clearing sales

[Ryan]

Just an observation from down here in Victoria, but this years clearing sales don't seem to be turning up much if anything in the way of old army vehicles. Blitz's and the like. Go back a few years and it seemed to be Blitz's every month and carrier bits/hulls etc too.
Where have all the good sales gone?
Are other states finding this too?

[Private_collector]

There were bugger-all up here to start with. Even if less now, half of nothing is still nothing!

Seriously, economic times have been slowing in rural communities for a while now, as you would know. I suspect there has been an increase in the trend to turn resting relics into a modest sum via scrap. Also wonder if the general (wildly exadurated) belief that military vehicles are rapidly increasing in $$$ has meant that fair portion have already come up for sale in some form. Just going back a few years, since I have been on MLU in fact, I have heard of great numbers of CMPs coming into the collections of members here, one by one. Bloody pleased about it too! That has surely slowed to a trickle in recent times.

Would I be correct in saying there are more trucks coming up for sale on ebay, gumtree, Whats in Your Paddock, etc...? Looks like as farm auctions go down, individual sales online go up?!?!?

Guess it might just be the farms have run out or 'virgin' vehicles. Had to happen eventually, just as we once had tens of thousands of WWII Diggers...............now........nearly all gone too.

[Howard]

Yep, Ryan, same here.
There's a couple of reasons that come to mind.
Firstly, most of the smaller farms around here have been swallowed up by big operators (although still primarily family based). These clearing sales were plentiful in the past when I was a young bloke, but now are very few and far between.
Another observation is the shift of our farmers in professionalism. Farms are much cleaner, tidier, and organised. Like any business a farm's presentation should reflect the quality of their product. You just don't see old stuff laying around on farms like you did twenty years ago.
I can't tell you how many times old timers from around this district have told me "Oh, Yeah, (insert name) had a blitz on his farm, sold it at his clearing sale for (insert value of sale, typically below $100).
This is just one of the several reasons that I reckon that I was born about ten years too late!
Cheers
H

[Marc Montgomery]

In Canada, roving scrappers, combined with environmental laws, mean lots of old stuff lying around behind the barn or out in the trees, is gone. Cruising the back roads one used to see quite a bit of potentially interesting stuff, old cars, tractors, CMP stuff but very rare now.

Also because of environmental laws, higher scrap prices, and more "professional" -profit- making junk yard operations there are a) far fewer junk yards than before and B) what are called 10 and 5 year yards... in other words parts for newer cars, anything over 10 or even 5 years gets scrapped--efficiency and profit