History Huge vintage Texas car collection crushed!

The process for getting replacement paperwork is onerous, on purpose.

If it were easy to get replacement paperwork, people would, on cars that did not belong to them.

Now, scale that onerous job to the size of this collection. Then, assign the task to grieving survivors.

 

That was hard to watch. An auction company coming in to handle the pre-sale of the cars and then scrapping what wouldn't bring the scrap price at auction seems like the better way to handle it. I'm sure they wouldn't have all been saved in an as-is auction but certainly more could have been. At least a few made it out of there whole.

I sell old parts like this stuff for a living, and I've seen this play out many times (although usually not stuff that was actually stored inside, or at this scale). If you know where some old stuff is stashed and it's available to you, get it now, and if you've got old stuff stashed that you're never going to get to, deal with it now.

I've watched Mr Goodpliers' videos before and he does seem to save a lot of stuff, I wonder if he was able to get anything from here, even some of the loose stuff he was picking through. There are only so many guys like he and I, who are willing to do the work to save some of this stuff and then sit on it until someone needs it. That's why the prices of used stuff on the internet is so high sometimes.

 

Some of the comments in this thread are just as painful as watching this mans passion (and your parts) get sent to the crusher. Thankfully for all of us a few cars got saved. No one wants to burden their family with such an undertaking but, sometimes you have to put your life on hold to carry out a loved ones wishes or a least take care of things in a manner that is consistent with those wishes. Blaming this loss of treasure on his hoarding is wrong! It's one thing not to care about cars or the car hobby but this could have been handled much differently. Everybody here is a hoarder to some degree and you know it. So now go out to the garage or your shop or your barn and set everything out in the yard and then call the junk man. You'll feel good knowing your not being selfish or burdening your family. Some sort of closure my ass. There is no such thing. There are people willing to do the right thing in life and then there are the REAL selfish people that are also lazy, stupid, or just full of greed.

 

I'd say the "didn't cull and sell off a batch when he was able to so he could actually fix a few of them is one issue. To some gathering and hording is way more important than fixing and driving.
I've got a friend the same age as me who has a hord of cars he will never do anything with that his nieces and nephews will sell off some day. Having and not letting anyone else have one has in the past been more important than selling off a few to pay for restoring a few of his favorites out of the batch.

 

im currently helping out a guy that lives a few blocks from me unload his literal junk out of his house. he is an actual hoarder, not in the sense of collecting old parts and cars.
I was introduced to him because he was selling an Indian motorcycle. I bought the indian, a norton, and my m47 truck from him that were all in his basement. i have also now helped him move about 5k worth of stuff that he's had that he thought was of worth no value, but he collected it over the past forty years. and im not even 1/8 of the way through his junk. ive been helping him out for teh past three months now since i met him. I made my money on the indian and the norton so im not taking this guy to the cleaners, he's my friend now and im just trying to help him get some closure.
i talked with him today about all the stuff he's moved so far and he compared it to post partum depression that a mother feels after birth.
often times moving shit out, even if you weren't going to use it, is incredibly difficult.
Im glad im able to help him get some of the stuff out of the way so its not a burden on his family when he leaves or dies....which is what he's expecting.
this morning i was talking with two fellas that are going to come in the spring to pull an old 1930's tractor out from under the back porch. its going to be a bear to move. but they too dont wanna see it just go to scrap.

 

I don't know any one person, or group of persons, in any family that could put their lives on hold for the amount of time that it would take to liquidate a collection of this size, or even a much smaller one.

A collection that size could take years to move, if being sold by piece.

If the desire was to liquidate this collection for money, and then to give that money to the heirs, or whomever, that was the responsibility of the collector, not the grieving heirs. Leaving the arduous liquidation process to heirs is a level of selfish expectation one should never feel entitled to. It is just creating burden.

As others have mentioned, the process of collecting (hoarding) was what was important to the owner. That goal was achieved.

Hoarding caused the loss of this collection, nothing else. It is gone. None of it will go on to build any new projects.

I am sorry that you feel attacked by this. Only you are responsible for how you process this information.

I am not a hoarder, by any stretch of the imagination. I have a strict inventory of parts that go into the two vehicles that I am building, one extra set of Hemi heads (which I will sell off as soon as I make sure that they have no cracks), and nothing else. Everything that is not directly involved in those two projects I sold off, or in most cases simply gave away to those who could make use of it. I even culled duplicate tools so a local young gun did not have to buy much of what he needed to get started.

 

Option 1; Just as easily as they hired a scrapper to crush, stack and haul away the cars, the family could have hired a reputable auction co (such as VanDerBrink) to spray paint a listing # on each car, have a day long walk-through auction and an additional day to trailer out. It would be cleaned out in a long weekend all the same for them, and more money would have been made along with the intangible fact that the old Man's pride and joy was shown some respect.
Maybe they hated him/resented the cars or perhaps like most non car people; could give a shit about old cars and their worth.
We've seen many Midwest Farm auctions this large get auctioned and hauled right quick. Bill of sale/as is. The auction Co does all the work, takes their cut then writes you a check. You don't even have to be there.

Option 2; List the property with the cars. Maybe a HAMBer would buy it lock stock & barrel. That would be Disneyland for me! The Wife would never see me.

Guessing maybe the family thought it was more saleable/marketable "cleaned up".

 

I had been in direct contact with five of the oldest car and parts collectors in my immediate area.

Each had parts in their collections, or whole collections that I wanted to purchase. Even on outrageously high offer, they refused sale.

That was fine. Their property, their choice.

Each had a similar refrain about "sitting on Gold" and/or "making heirs rich".

In each case, I left my contact information with the relatives.

All of those guys passed. In every case, the heirs PAID a scrapper to haul off "grandpa's junk".

In each case, "grandpa's junk" included hyper-rare parts, in exotic metals, and historic pieces that could never be duplicated. All gone. Dust in the wind.

My pointed and painful question is: Who here will be the next person to erase more of motoring history?

 

Let me add just a bit of personal perspective on this topic. The photograph you see below, was my dads wrecking yard and car and truck repair and body shop, this photo was taken in 1975 when I got out of the Army.
25 years prior to that, the yard was always full of an incredible array of cars we had towed in, and as I was a kid growing up around that wrecking yard, I know just how strange and weird it was to see so many cool cars from the 40's 50's and 60's get crushed and scrapped, sad to say, I participated in the scrapping of those cars.

My dad would say, when I asked if we could save this one or that one, he would say, " If these old cars cant pay for their foot print, then they gotta go " And lets face it, it was a source of income to put food on the table.

As you see the picture here, it was the auction company that had come in and arranged all of the stuff left behind to be auctioned off, as my dad and his cousin that owned this business, were at a point where they had decided to start another business buying and selling industrial machinery for farm and for manufacturing purposes.

Sadly, my dad got sick and passed away at age 48 in 1977, so my mom and I were spared, having to go through the anguish of having to deal with all of the stuff, associated with my dads wrecking yard.

There are a lot of good comments and observations about this video and the content, as stated, it would have been a logistical nightmare of epic proportions, for someone, or that mans family, to try to save all of the usable parts, on all of the cars that were crushed, out there in that Texas location!
Its cool that some of the cars were saved and made it out of there !

 

I watched the entire video. As disturbing to me as it was.
There seems to be lots of sentiment about "that's what a hoarder gets" in this thread.
Did you notice when Goodpliers said that the owner/collector has dementia and has no say anymore, and his wife never really cared for his collecting? He isn't even dead yet and his collection is raped.

I cannot speak as to whether this guy was the nicest fellow in the world, or an entire ass. Nor can I speak to whether his wife was a "trophy" who was just about the money, or a sweetheart that was treated poorly. What I can say, is that if he is still alive and this is going on, she is getting some sort of revenge. Whether it is from perceived wrongs or real ones.

I also think that maybe there was a different loader operator from day one to day two. The first guy seemed like he was being gentle to the cars. Like he knew there is a special place in hell for people who do this. It's right down the hall from people who crush old tractors, according to a buddy of mine.
The guy on day two either had no conscience, or he enjoys wrecking good stuff.

I have nothing to this magnitude, but I could be a "hoarder" to some people. I am 49, so I got a late start!
Theoretically, I can retire at 58. One of my first tasks at that point will be to catalogue my stuff for my kids. Then they can have an idea of it's value, and know how to sell it off. I have told them multiple times that if I go suddenly, hire someone that knows car auctions to sell, not some local jackass. I also told them which of my friends to ask for help identifying items, and to give them some stuff from my pile as a thank you for their help.
My hope is to have a good 15 plus years building from my collection, and then start thinning it in an exchange for quality vs. quantity after that. But nobody knows how many trips around the sun they get...

 

I get a full ration of crap every time I bring this up, but I am going to do it again.

In this particular example, 100% of the vehicles that were collected by this person were not ever built into vehicles that could go out on the road. Now 100% of the vehicles that were crushed cannot be built into vehicles that could go out on the road.

There are countless people on this board that are sitting on collections of vehicles and parts, which they will never sell, 'cause they got a right, and who am I to tell them what to do, that will not ever be built into vehicles that could go out on the road.

The exact same first step as the the person in Texas. Prevented builds for the sake of possession of buildable vehicles, or parts contained therein.

There is no difference. As long as you sit on your pile, and don't turn it into anything, nobody can, either.

When you are no longer able to build, or worse, take your last breath, what is the plan? Will your heirs scrap "grandpa's junk" like they did in Texas, or all of the collections near to me? Will they care what you want to see happen?

If your intent is to leave wealth to your heirs on your passing, cash out and leave them money. Let someone have at that which you are not going to use.

Once those vehicles and parts are gone, they are gone.

Ask yourself what you are more dedicated to: garage ornaments, never to be built out, or supporting this ever vanishing hobby?

 

Just to add to that, I don't often sell stuff. Most of my friends would tell you, "He just buys stuff. But if he thinks you need it, he probably will give it to you". That applies to my old, cool stuff. I do occasionally bring something home to part out to cover the item(s) I wanted from it. Sometimes I buy stuff just to make sureit doesn't go away. Had it been close by, I would have saved stuff until I was broke at the site in the video.

 

Gimpy, did you read my last paragraph, or just reply to the first?

 

Neither. I was not responding to you. I had not refreshed my window, and had not even seen what you wrote.

None of this was pointed toward you.

Having read it now, you clearly have your head in the right place.

 

Thank you. I am trying, but if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, I probably wouldn't like to see what happened to lots of this stuff. Hoping I have enough time to get it laid out...

 

Pointed at nobody in particular:

When a young person is faced with the choice in building a cool car, what do you expect them to do?

I can buy a Civic for $4k, grab a hair dryer kit and some suspension parts from eBay, put some fat rubber on shiny wheels, and wrap it. $9k in and I can have a weather-ready daily-driver that will go under 12 in the quarter, handle like a slot car, have AC, full interior, and a thumpin' stereo.

Or, I can buy a very marginal Model A that needs everything, with a clean title, and no back fees.

How did we get here? Demand outstripping supply. Hoarding parts artificially throttles supply. Crushing them destroys supply. Both cause prices to rise out of reach.

 

Quoted for truth.
How many of you REALLY would have stepped up and spent money? If even a fraction of the indignant would actually break out the wallet, the HAMB would be overflowing with build threads.
The stuff is out there and relatively pretty easy to find. But evidently not as instantly gratifying as a quick post knocking the land owners. It sucks for us, but we aren’t in their shoes. They had a problem and solved it. Go buy an old car and show us all what you are doing to “save” the stuff. And post pictures.

 

It certainly depends on the seller. We see ads all the time that say "If it doesn't sell by Sunday, its going to the crusher". But they want 7 times scrap value.
If this was near me and I could have bought at 1.5 to 2 times scrap value, my statement holds true. I would have bought until I ran out of money to buy and haul.

 

Owners doing as they see fit. Quick and easy solution so they can facilitate whatever plan they have in mind. And at today's scrap prices they will make a quick buck or two. Sad to us car lovers, but not all see it the way we do.......

 

Lot of people talking crap but how many of these cars were saved back when nobody was wanting them? Leaving them on the market so that somebody could have bought a project car probably would have resulted in it getting crushed a long time ago.
How many people on here sit and sing the praise of finding something at an auction that was the result of one of these "hoarders" dragging it home back in the day.

It is very sad and unfortunate that this collection ended up getting crushed. A lot of time, energy and money went into saving all these cars. Not every hoarder collection gets crushed.
We've all benefited from hoarders. Rather than bashing, we should lament the loss.

 

Through the years we age, we change, our outlook becomes refined (or distorted...) and at times our wisdom is totally lacking when "in the moment" ! I attended college in South Dakota in the late 60s and just outside of town there were several private yards that existed when farming wasn't doing as well as selling parts. Model A's and 32's were available, but the demand wasn't what it is today; if my life truly depended on it, I couldn't find a single location today whether there were any cars left or not.
I"ve owned Model T's, Model A's, 13 Corvettes, 3 Camaro's, 4 1957 Chevies, a single 1955 Ford
panel, and a 1930's dirt track sprint car - some completed, some were parts cars, some just for the sake of owning them (at the time)and after nearly a lifetime of the "some day" scenario surrounding the latest project, I finally admitted to myself and others that I didn't have enough "LIFE TIMES" left to do the things I wanted and finish a car to the standards I probably couldn't live up to.
A few years ago my searching produced a done 34 - 5 window that I enjoy driving, changed very
little from what the father & son had built from their visions, and now as the 3rd owner of this
all steel master piece I get to enjoy it and all it's details. I'm in the final stages of building
a 30 A' coupe that I have gathered parts for it since 1967 in college. I won't be leaving too
much for the family to dispose of, other than some spare parts and lots of acquired
metal working equipment - no junk yard, and no project cars , as all my "some day"
projects ended up in someone else's garage - did any of them ever get completed ?
I'll probably never know, but I sure hope so !

 

90% of the cars were junk 30s, 40s and 50s 4 doors - i see running ones listed all the time and the owners cant give them away - they would have been crushed long ago if this guy hadn't started his junkyard, err collection.....

 

This right here !!! Exactly.

we all watch this video and see gold and platinum. We see Picasso’s and Michaelangelos .
We are but 0.01% of the population .

most people see old rusty junk .

let’s face it , there where a bunch of cars that where worth saving. But most where rusty , parts missing 4 doors that you could / would spend double on restoring them what they would be worth in the end.

Having a huge hoard like this when the person who thinks it’s “ gold” passes. To regular folk it’s junk.
And let’s face it , yes there was a TON of money to be made selling off all the cars and parts there. But who really wants to waste time and effort at 50-100 bucks a sale ??

both my wife’s parents passed away a few years ago. According to my FIL he was sitting on gold in Portugal . “ lots of properties lots of mooneeeey”
Well after he passed we took a trip and with my wife’s uncles looked at the properties . Over the years they got divided and divided and divided again to where , yes they owned multiple properties but an acre here 2 there etc etc .
And Portugal changed the laws about 10 years ago to where if the property is zone for agriculture that’s what it is no building of houses on it.

so now these properties are a liability to the family. Luckily her uncle travels there a lot , pays the taxes etc .

he’s sold a couple to neighbours and that , but for 1500 bucks up to a whopping 3000 !!!! Oh my . By the time my wife and BIL get the lawyers involved and sign paper work etc , the time missed from work it’s just not worth the hassel .

and 99.9% of the population look at old rusty cars the same way. That or they get Barrett Jackson syndrome and think it’s worth 12345677788899 dollars .

sad thing to watch but realistically, it’s expected in today’s age.

 

I want to add .

At work we just scrapped about 40 forklift . Most we took in on trade or bought at a very low price for parts or a cheap sale truck etc.
Well the shop was at capacity and we need room ASAP .
So me and my boss went through and tagged all those trucks as scrap .
A convoy of flat beds and low boys showed up snd over the course of a week I shipped them all out.to be scrapped

a loss of over 100,000 to my boss and a loss to me of a TON of useable parts to keep our rental fleet going , cores test units etc.

but in the end it saved us money as square footage has a cost , my time to catalog all those parts has a cost .
Now in that 10,000 sqft those trucks where taking up we have sold 250,000 dollars worth of units since October snd have another close to 1/2 a million in units sitting in the same square footage all slated to go by the end of February.

You simply can’t hold onto everything .and everything has a cost in the end .

 

@VANDENPLAS
That point about materials taking up floor space is well said.
40 forklifts recycled, that is a lot of weight just from the counterweights alone on those units, hope it brought some good revenue at the scrap yard !

 

If you're gonna build them all some day then you had better get on it, because if not then most likely everyone will be buying your stuff that has been customized into refrigerators, staplers and commemorative souvenir coins. A damn shame but not unexpected when people that are not interested in old cars are forced to get involved to do something with them.

 

the counter weights are “pig iron “ kinda like “ white steel”. It’s a mush mash of what ever the foundry had on hand that day , no real strength to it just weight . And the forklifts are “ mixed metal “ and “ dirty” due to the oil and grease .

scrap is high right now , we get roughly 350-450 per truck . So yeah my boss made some money , but it was still a total loss in the big picture .
If we could have pulled the motors , electric motors , and divided up the “ dirty steel” clean steel “ copper “ aluminum “ snd junked all the plastic there would be some good money to be made . But at what I get paid snd what our mechanics get paid , and not just there hourly rate , but what they can potentially generate in hourly wages snd part sales it still makes no secs to scrap them out like that .
Just cut our losses and move forward.


There is a guy locally that has been advertising forever a bunch of late 60’s-70’s muscle cars , Ferrari’s Lamborghinis and all sorts of euro luxury cars .
Everything is a project , in pieces , left outside or just kinda “ unknown “

his prices on the surface seem like a deal , but anyone who’s worked on this kind of stuff knows everything is worth a kings ransoms , used stuff is almost non existent and if it is your still paying a huge premium. Shit an oil filter for a Lamborghini is $400 bucks ?!?!?!?’ Yeah I think it’s a hard pass on your “ affordable project “

I see this stuff probably going to auction and getting pennies or there are a couple “ high end luxury car scrap yard / shops “ in the GTA that will give this guy a low ball package deal for all his “ treasure “ and be done with it .

 

I cannot tell you all how many times that I have had good parts that I have offered up for free, that nobody was willing to take.

I am pretty sure that @Pocket Nick has had the same experience.

I had to pay $1200 to get rid of parts taking up close to $600/mo. in storage fees.

None of it was rare or unique, but it was all useful for rods and customs. Now it is all gone. I am not happy about it, but of everyone who claims that they would have paid "top dollar" for parts, nobody would even take them for free, and not even if I shipped them for just that cost, after I packed them for free.

I gave away what I could.

My point? Talk is cheap. Everyone says what they "would have done". When it comes time to actually do, they don't.

 

The video is hard to watch, yet it only shows the tip of the iceberg as most cars are already gone. Imagine the place full with cars going to scrap soon.

I think the best option would have been to auction everything off - more money for the heirs, most of the stuff saved, everybody happy. This has been done before, so why not here. Maybe because the heirs are ignorant, who knows?

On the other hand, you people in the US are spoiled, you still have so much stuff lying around that people simply scrap vintage cars and parts instead of selling.
In Europe a place like this would be a sensation and collectors would be all over it and even cars rusted away 5 inches from the ground up would be carried away by someone.

For example in kaufdorf, Switzerland there was a huge scrapyard with vintage cars which had to be auctioned off in 2008. Most of the cars you see in the video were sold, even the worst wrecks brought some hundred bucks:

 

What is the scrap steel price per car, $ 400.00