Pete's Point of View

RECORDED VOICEOVER AUDIO TODAY FOR SEGMENTS ON "MACHINERY SHOW"
Today (January 19th) I drove 3 and 1/2 hours south to Des Moines, IA to record my audio voiceover tracks for upcoming episodes of the "Machinery Show" on RFD-TV. Knocked off (4) of my "Machinery Pete" segments that will show video from the famous December 1, 2009 "Auction of the Decade" in east-central South Dakota. WOW......some great footage. You're not going to want to miss these upcoming episodes. Approximately 5,000 folks were in attendance at that auction. Our camera guy Bill positioned himself inside the cab of the CaseIH MX200 tractor as it was selling......great stuff! When he pans the camera, it seriously looks like a SEA of people. Oh, that MX200? It was a 2002 model with only 183 hours.....so it was absolutely LIKE NEW. It sold for $97,000, which smashed the previous record high auction sale price I had seen on MX200's. Our "Machinery Show" airs on RFD-TV every Thursday evening at 8 PM central time and again Sunday night at 9 PM central. Tune in the next few weeks to catch this footage from the big South Dakota sale.

** WHAT'S A JD 1760 12R-30 PLANTER WORTH? **
No need to guess. Just rely on the facts from our "Calculator" pricing tool in the our Machinerypete.com web site. Here's what it shows for JD 1780 Planter values:

Notice how the spread between the average auction price and the average dealer advertised price grew last year by quite a bit. "PLANTERS" are one of the few equipment categories where that happened last year. I think mostly due to increasing stockpile of used planters on dealer's lots. When I was prepping for my talk at the 2010 Ag Connect Expo in Orlando last week, I ran tons of #'s on all different equipment categories, comparing AVE. AUCTION PRICE data to AVE. DEALER ADVERTISED PRICE data. Shocking to see how very close there were in many, many cases. To me that speaks to the "premium" folks have been (and are still) willing to pay for the really good condition used equipment when it shows up for sale at auction out there. Again, just a few select equipment categories that are bucking this trend, PLANTERS being one. Others include SKID STEERS (still "soft" used values due to weakness in construction biz & cattle/dairy regions). The spread between AVE. AUCTION PRICE and AVE. DEALER ADVERTISED PRICE on COMBINES grew a bit last year too. Not nearly to level of PLANTERS, but did stretch out a bit from where the spread was at in late summer 2008 (hardly any spread at all on COMBINES back then).

VIKES 2 WINS AWAY!
If you've followed my "Machinery Pete" writings over the years, you may know I'm a huge Minnesota Vikings fan. Been once since I was 5 years old. Dad used to take us to one game a year at the old Metropolitan Stadium. What fun to watch Fran Tarkenton, Chuck Foreman, Alan Page, Carl Eller and the boys. They always seemed to win. Except the BIG ONE. 0-4 in Super Bowls. Those defeats were tough to take when I was 4, 7, 8 and 11 years old. I'm hoping a win Sunday over the Saints can get our purple guys back to the BIG ONE for first time since 1977. Been a long wait. Been so fun watching #4, Mr. Favre, this season. I'm glad he came over to our side. Always enjoyed watching him play for the Pack over the years. Can't believe a guy can play that well at 40. Can't imagine having those 320 LB lineman falling on you for 4-5 months every Sunday. Think I'd break in 1/2. My birthday is Dec. 1st. 6 weeks ago I had a fun B-day attending the "Auction of the Decade" in South Dakota (see note above). I remember my 9th birthday, December 1, 1974. Dad took me and my little brother to the Met to watch the Vikes play the New Orleans Saints. Archie Manning was the Saints QB. Vikes won 33-9. Bright, bitterly cold day. Warm in the sleeping bag & parka. I'm hoping for one more win over the Saints this Sunday :-)

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