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We drove 1300 miles from Oregon to attend the sale and we had the time of our lives!!! What a great event and Kruse really ran the auction well. We also attended the auction in Yuma last year and the Bridgeport auction was run much, much better. I personally love these high level auctions just because we get to talk to so many people, see how the prices are, and live on the adrenaline of bidding. Hauling home tractors is an added bonus! We bought a few MM's at the sale, the UTS-D Special being the best one. We got it running on the spot, peeled the cab off it and used it to load everything else. A friend of mine bought the G708 and it is home safe in Oregon too. With the quantity of tractors at the sale and most of it being common stuff, the prices were about what we expected. The more rare items in all brands brought more money, of course. The MM's sold decent, but then again we are used to West Coast prices. On Saturday, the nicer tractors that were in dry storage sold really well, including the MM's. Kruse finished selling around 8-8:30pm each night, which gave us a chance to sample the night life in Scottsbluff where we stayed. We also came prepared to BBQ our own lunch in the parking lot, complete with Miller Time. It was great! My father and I went to preview the Gary Phillips estate when we were at the Winter PGR show in Gering. If you didn't get to see the collection, it was AMAZING! I don't think I'll ever see so many tractors and equipment again in one place. I knew that I had to attend the auction, just to experience it. By the way, we talked to Arnie Hariman, who is mentioned in the Kruse catalog for the sale. He worked for Gary Phillips many, many years. He filled us in on the story about what happened with the estate, Kurt Aumann, Kruse, etc. About a year ago Gary wanted to start liquidating the collection. They decided to have a series of auctions, selling a few hundred tractors at a time over a couple years. In May of '07 they started lining up the tractors. Later, in August, Gary passed away. His widow, Joan, decided to sell everything all at once since she wanted out. They decided to have one big auction to sell everything and ultimately contracted with Aumann to do so. In the mean time they entertained offers to sell the place lock, stock and barrel, including the land. They were approached by three different parties to buy the whole place. Gary's guys appraised everything and gave them a number. Two of the three parties passed on the deal, but the other, a group from Texas, decided to buy the place. Joan decided to sell and that caused a friction between her and Kurt Aumann for breaching his contract. Kurt is one of the best and highly respected in the business and I can see why he would have been upset. In the meantime, the new owners decided to have an auction and ultimately hired Kruse to do so. I'm sure there will be a shake out of legal matters between Kurt and Joan. Also, Kruse didn’t charge for parking or an entrance fee each day. The catalog was the ticket, allowing two people to enter any and all days of the sale. After the second day they recognized our group of 5 dudes and we didn’t even have to show the catalogs. I guess we’re that recognizable, or legendary, haha. Also, loading was free although since we had a running tractor and trailers with winches we were able to load ourselves. We even used the UTS-D Special to help other people load. The weather was cold the first couple days but got really warm by the end of the week. We were walking around in t-shirts at one point. Despite all of the comments and boycotting there were alot of people there. I don't think I've ever seen so many gooseneck trailers in one place either! My feeling is this - tractors for sale, people who love tractor will be there, opportunity to learn more, have a great time and be immersed in the tractor world for a week - a priceless experience! In our group of five dudes, we bought nine tractors, four parts tractors, steel wheels and other parts. A couple of the guys are Deere guys so our tractors were about half MM and half Deere. We managed to get it all out of there already and were heavily loaded on the way home. All in all it was a trip we will talk about for many years to come and it was a wonderful experience. I came home tan from the Nebraska sun and my wife was excited to see me. Zack PS - I can post a few pictures if anyone is interested.
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