Folks Of Interest Collectors Vs Scrappers

. I have not posted in awhile and felt this subject needed to be addressed. I have been digging with a friend at a car guy hoarder house. The gentlemen is in his 90s and in a nursing home. Daughter is handling estate and is up against the clock. Throw in family BS and it just gets better. Owner of house was a Hershey vendor since the 70s. Problem here is that there is also a scrapper guy involved. The whole back yard was full of vintage tin and rearends etc. ALL went to the scrapyard!! My friend and I are digging as fast as we can to recover as much parts out of the basement as possible trying to stay ahead of the other guy. Mostly 20s-40s Mopar and Chevy. Gauges,lights,chrome etc. Tons of tin toys and bicycle parts. Vises, nuts ,bolts and cans of hardware items. Too much to list
It just makes me sick that things today are seen as how can I get my money NOW and no regard for real worth.The daughter is being tugged from all sides and we are trying to tell her we can get her more money for selling the parts to collectors than letting this other guy basically throw it away.My friend and I both work so the other guy has all kinds of time,70 years old and retired. Just yesterday he grabbed a 20s hood for the load and it was not an ordinary hood,it was off something BIG in size and my guess was a Pierce or the like.. I guess what I ask everyone is when you see good old valuable parts being scrapped, try as hard as hell to save it.My last load is still in my truck because I have no more room to store it until I clean up my storage unit. Most of the sheet metal still upstairs in the garage is NOS. My friend is negotiating today with her to gain possession.
That scrap guy hates us. I dont hate him but he gets no respect either.

 

Why not try to make a deal with the scrap guy on the better items prior to him scrapping?

 

yes, it's a shame....but i'm afraid we will see more of this in the future as car guys get older

 

Have made a couple offers to buy outright and she wont do it. Scrap guy has her fooled.

 

couple years ago i was bidding in an online auction of a bunch of old car parts. i got a couple things, but noticed that one bidder number was getting by far, more stuff than anyone else. the day of pick -up, he let me buy a couple things from the scrap pile, and i asked where he lived so i could go shopping. he said, i dont have anything at home, this all goes straight to the scrap yard. why not try to sell it later for more money i asked, he replied "gotta buy diapers man". i had bought a 26-27 ruxtel axle out of his pile for 100, he would have got 10 in scrap, i sold it at chickasha for 1000. thats a few diapers more

 

All about real estate, scrapper doesn’t have to store or sort, collectors run out of room sorting ,pricing and waiting to sell. mean while daughter has to turn over the real estate for reasons probably larger than a bunch of “old tin”. Plus she lost her dad. Makes me wonder about Don in Niles (NorCal) and his daughters dilemma

 

Few years ago, a local yard was bringing in the crusher...The owner had a $20 sale day, whatever you could carry out in your arms...A friend and I made a side deal on whatever sheetmetal we could pull or cut off, put in a pile and come to an agreed price, rather than crush and scrap...The owner agreed and we came out with 40s and 50s hoods,fenders, doors, front roof sections for future chops (not having to add a piece to lengthen the roof)...and basically got it all for scrap price.
The owner really was a car guy...BUT had bills to pay too

 

I hate to say it but it's their job. They scrap stuff. Most work with limited funds. They rely on turning that money every day. What bothers me is that when you want to buy something out of the pile they think it must be gold. I am ok giving them a fair profit. The guys here usually want 20 times what they would get for it. If you don't buy it they just throw it on the truck.

 

It is a sad reality . Hard to read the scrapper guy without knowing him, but he is used to looking at every piece as a set price that he knows will cover his expenses .

 

Just think of all the scrap drives the parts from the teens twentys and thirtys have servived just to be scraped by a guy needing diapers for his kid.

 

yes, it is sad that the diaper had more value than our sacred old junk, but theres more to it than that. keep in mind, the diaper man out bid the car people. two reasons i believe, one is many of us older guys already have too much stuff,or are too cheap to out bid the scrap man, and there are less bidders because sadly, the young folks dont want the shit.

 

You need to make a one price deal with the owner ( flash a stack of cash), rent a couple of box trucks with lift gates for a weekend and hire a few young strong laborers ( think-High School Football team).
Rent another storage unit or garage for a few months.
If the daughter won't then give the scrap guy $500 to f off forever.
If all that fails, take a couple of vacation days from work and out cherry pick the scrapper before he does. You have to get that NOS stuff before him.

Scrappers=pretty much an enemy of the old car hobby.

 

I've met many scrappers, some have been real nice and were willing to sell me stuff out of their pile (but it's always a right-now, cash deal, never met one that would hold onto something for a day), and some were very competitive and would shut down any offers to pick or buy.

I'm glad you and your friend are trying to rescue what you can. One thing that has worked for me in the past is, if it's obvious where the guy is bringing his scrap (or if you can figure it out, or just ask) a lot of times you can buy stuff from the scrap yard. A lot of times the guys running the yard are much cooler about selling stuff, they know they're making more money that way and they're not a day's pay away from starvation.

 

Also, the lesson here is, if you care about your collections, sell it before it becomes a huge burden on your family. Even if you don't get your top dollar Hershey price. I've bought a lot of huge collections of parts from old guys who knew they weren't going to ever get to it, at a price that I can make a profit to put my time into reselling. The real "heroes of the hobby" aren't just saving stuff, they're putting it into the hands of people who will do something with it, even when it's not themselves. Saving it for 50 years just to get scrapped last week wasn't really saving it at all.

 

Sometimes its very hard to out bid the scrap man. Many scrap men are flippers who try and buy for less than it will bring at the scrap yard. however sometimes the scrapper is the actual owner of the scrap yard and will pay 100% retail. Scrap men get fast turnover. Parts sales are slow and the buyers tend to be picky. Today I sold two bucket seats & a console. a grill and 4 hubcaps. and ive owned that stuff for over a decade. In the past before I started drawing a Social Security Ponzi check. I sold potentially valuable stuff for scrap. You gotta pay the bills. Im trying to reduce stuff I don't want. This week I listed a 62 olds 4 dr on Facebook Marketplace. Complete car $650. If it don't sell since ive owned it a couple of decades and never used or sold any parts from it. In a few weeks if it don't sell it will be strippe d & go to the scrapper. I will pull the driveline. torch off the heavy steel & bumpers. remove the wiring and trim. put the hood on my fence. and beat the bejabbers out of the body before I haul it off.

 

Scrappers make their money on volume. Go in and buy part of somebody's collection, what's left may not be enough for the guy to make money on and they then charge the owner to haul it off. Somebody liquidating an estate of a loved one probably just wants it gone. There's also legal restrictions involved many places. I know that here in Washington, they're prohibited by law from selling parts out of whatever they pick up. Some still do it, but loss of their license is a possibility if they get caught.

 

a license to be a scrapper and illegal to sell what you may find. and i thought i had seen and heard every thing i guess not

 

"...and beat the bejabbers out of the body before I haul it off."

Why?

 

Money turns good people into assholes.

 

Yeah, it got complicated. All this came about back when scrap prices spiked and people were stealing anything that wasn't nailed down and even some stuff that was. If you're hauling recognizable dead cars (i.e. not cut into random pieces and mixed with other scrap, this mostly pertains to frames/bodies), only licensed scrappers and wrecking yards are allowed to bring them in. If you sell parts, you have to have a wrecking yard license and that's a whole 'nother set of regs. If you're hauling in random metal, anybody can do that but you won't get paid right away, they mail you a check (unless it's aluminum cans, those will get you cash) unless you're a licensed scrapper.

All this was done to cut down on theft, and by and large it worked.

 

So the scrapper cant sell any parts off of it. To be certain its crushed and shredded. For example I was overstocked on 67 thru 72 air cond chevy cabs that needed rocker cab corner and floor pan work. So I hauled several off When scrap was high to get money to buy other stuff. I beat them up. that way nobody could get any usable parts off them. Reducing the supply making the ones I still have more valuable. and just being a Curmudgeon! Scrap yard operators here in Arkansas can and do sell vehicles and other stuff to individuals. years ago I was employed at the local scrap yard I spent half my wages buying the (Good Stuff).

 

Hey Fredco if you swing a deal and need help moving stuff shoot me a message. I can free up this weekend to help. I will be out of town March 9th weekend. Hobo Jim

 

Make a offer to buy the whole works. Everything. Tell her you’ll clean out everything for one price. No muss no fuss on her part. Use vacation time, ask around for a building you can use short term and haul and dump off loads as fast as you can.
Sort it all afterwards.

 

I work at a scrapyard and most of the guys bringing metal in would be happy to make more than scrap price for the stuff if they can. Try working with this guy see if theres a local scale you can weigh loads of stuff and pay him say double what he's getting paid per pound where he brings it. Steel is not paying more than a few cents a pound right now.

 

Do you want the parts or not? Step up, rent some trucks load them, dump the contents in your yard and sort through it. Scrap what is crap, sell the rest. This is Swap Meet Vendor 101 unless I missed something. Bob

 

Fooled? How so?

You "I'll give you $2500.

Him "I'll give you $1600.

He has her fooled his is the better deal or what?

 

I'm building a 34 Dodge coupe so I'd be interested in any 33-34 Dodge Plymouth stuff. Some is 34 Dodge only but a lot can be shared if not going for authenticity.

 

That's quite a novel approach to marketing old vehicle parts; destroying inventory to make what you have remaining, more valuable, lol. The "if I can't sell it, I'll destroy it so nobody else can use it" isn't the typical spirit of an old car hobbyist.
I envision you taking a sledge hammer to the 62 Olds out in the field, yelling "Nobody's gonna want THIS door (Bam)!" "Lets see you sell THIS windshield (crash)!" Asinine.

 

all the scrap yards in the metro area wont let you look, much less buy any thing. you gotta get out in the country to mom and pops steel yard to buy. i used to haul in a load, and while the magnet was unloading me i walked around the pile and picked out small pieces of new steel scraps, throw them on the truck when the loader guy is done, weigh out, and you really bought them right? well, years ago yeah. today, the loader is radioing to the office that you are steeling stuff. i dont do much any more, but years ago i always had nice clean new steel at home for projects, that resulted from hauling scrap in

 

I have watched this several times. Owner is sitting on Gold, and won't sell a thing, wanting to leave all his riches to his heirs.

The heirs scrap it all.

And people call me crazy for selling off everything that I am not currently using, or flat-out shipping it to people, for free, at my expense.

Parts belong in rotation, in use, not hoarded. Hoarding is how they end up getting destroyed.

If destroying our hobby is your hobby, kindly take up something else.