Mecum Auctions’ Gone Farmin’ division has added an onsite live sale to its calendar, going to Solomon, Kansas, on June 4 for the Abilene Machine Collection auction. The docket will include more than 125 so-called muscle tractors.
Muscle tractors are farming machines with engines rated at 100 or more horsepower.
“Large, late-model tractor values may be at historic low prices,” Successful Farming magazine’s agriculture.com website has noted. “On the other hand, their grandfathers – the 100+ hp. muscle tractors from the 1960s and 1970s – are selling at historic high prices.”
“The powerhouses set to cross the auction block in Solomon include desirable vintage tractors from the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s,” Mecum said in announcing the sale, which will be the fourth such on-site sale by Gone Farmin’.”
Among the vintage tractors on the Kansas docket are a 1974 Oliver 1955 FWA (front-wheel assist), an International 3088 FWA and an International 3688 Hi-Crop, a 1966 John Deere 4020 diesel-fueled Hi-Crop and a 1969 John Deere 4520 diesel.
“The collection’s passionate owner has personally cared for and restored the many tractors that make up the Abilene Machine assemblage, and it’s been the focus of his life’s work dating all the way back to the 1960s and the official founding of Abilene Machine Inc. in 1981,” Mecum reports. “The result here is impressive quality and extensive variety.”
Abilene Machine was founded by then-29-year-old Randy Roelofsen and a friend, Loren Engel, and they were soon joined by Roelofsen’s nephew, Todd Roelofsen, providing replacement farm-equipment parts to Kansas farmers.
“We kept getting calls for the same used parts and, as we ran out, we started manufacturing them new,” Todd Roelofsen is quoted on the company’s website. “Being able to service the farmer and supply his needs was our main goal.”
For more information on the sale, visit the Gone Farmin’ website.
