For years, in the little town of Solgohachia, there was a large collection (several hundred cars) with cars ranging from the thirties through the sixties, most of which were very buildable. They were accumulated over the years by a mechanic who died a few years ago. The last time I was there, with several thousand dollars in cash, the grandson of the old guy wouldn't even talk about the cars. They weren't for sale, and they weren't interested in even talking about it. I went by there Sunday afternoon, and everything is gone. Cars, buildings, even trees. The whole hillside has been bulldozed. There has been a lot of natural gas drilling in the area, and my guess is a gas drilling company bought or leased the land, or possibly a scrap metal recycler made an offer they couldn't refuse, and it's all on the way to China to make cheap crap to sell to the US. Shame. There's lots of hotrodders around here who would have paid good money for some of the cars if the owners had been willing to sell. I'll never understand how people who don't care about old cars end up with so many.
same thing over here , an older gent i know of has about 50 or so older model cars sittin in a pasture not sure whats all in there as the old fella wont even talk to anyone about them let alone let anyone look them over.. a few months ago a new scape steel plant opened up a few miles down the road so its just a matter of time for these cars as well..
It's gotta be a defective gene, and man is it popular ! I have tried to buy a few cars in my back road car spotting for years only to be told to"piss off it NOT FOR SALE". Or the I'm gonna restore it soon as blah,blah,blah. I'm 52 and some of these cars have been sitting in the same spot since I was in my 20's
"I'm going to fix it up someday" Spoken by a 78 year old man about the 1 of about 70 cars rotting that I wanted to buy.
About ten years ago I came across a old guy that had a collection of ancient farm machinery and really old heavy duty trucks and next to all of them was a 30-31 model a sedan body, he was selling all of the other stuff but I wanted the sedan his response was "that's just junk you don't want that" I tried and tried to buy it from him but he just wouldn't sell it, I drove back there a few years later and he bulldozed the whole property and while he was at it he ran over the sedan body with the bulldozer and crushed it into the ground. he told me he had an old hot rod in one of his sheds with a nailhead motor in it but he didn't want to dig through the building to show it to me, I'm sure that old hot rod will end up in the crusher if this guy continues to own it.
On the converse, we broke down in the truck when we went to get my '40 Nash, it overheated..while sitting in the cafe down the road, someone my buddy knows mentions he has a Model A tudor body to get rid of. All he wanted for it? Some sort of grille shell for a '20s car. Done and done. The body's not great, but it's better than the one on a car some guy gave us $2500 for last fall. It even has some paint left.
I'm all for....it is their stuff they can do what they want with it.....but to a point. When they crush instead of selling it to a willing buyer, I think it is ridiculous, they have to know that people would be willing to buy the stuff for at least scrap metal price, if not more. There is an old "junkyard" like that just west of Owensville Ohio, they use to let you in, but now forget about it, no amount of talking will get you inside the yard, and last spring when I went there, the owners son said they have began to crush some of the stuff. And ther is a 57 Sedan Delivery back there. It was there since the early 80's at least, and he said it was "still back there"...."for now"...with a stupid ass smile on his face.
My brother works part time for a company that goes through the Dakotas ans Minnesota buying cores. They but truck load of motors and transmissions and take what is usable and scraps the rest. Many flathead, hemi and nailhead goes to the scraper. My brother tried too talk in into keeping the hot rod motors but his answer was he did not want to deal with a motor here and there sale it was not worth his time. Its sad to hear of this kind of mentality, but lot of people just look for the quick buck. Jim H
theirs a guy down on exit 9 on us 23 just inside the michigan border that i had to go and get a wreck from about 3 years ago and i got talkin to the old man and found out their must be 250 to 300 cars on his property, but wont sell even a fuse from them. so after droping the wreck off i went back to our tow yard that we rented from some old timers that used to be in the wrecker bussiness and was talkin to them, i guess his kid had robed a bank and put it in one of the cars, ok - so that would explain why their not for sale, guess hes getting out of jail soon from everything im hearing so maybe some cars might come up for sale here locally
We have about 150 old cars and trucks and we try to price them at about 10% above crusher price. last week this guy was looking at two 65 chev bel air bodies i told him$500.00 He gets mad said the last time i was here you said $300.00 I asked how long ago 5 years was the reply. I told him that 3oo would have bought 300 gal of gas back then$ 500 today would be cheaper he said he would think about it If he does come back the price is going to be $1000. Now you know why lots of old farts like me are assholes. when i die my wife will crush the whole lot. Old wolf
This is very sad but it happens everywhere, everyday, this is the exact reason why I try and buy up everything that I can get my hands on, when I come across a "good deal" The way I see it is, the fewer and fewer of these old cars that are left, just makes them that much more valuable later on.
That is a shame to crush those old cars and not give people a chance to buy them. Some just don't want to fool with buyers because a lot of buyers Are A$$holes . Over time they just get pissed off at buyers and won't even talk to them!
I think the problem may be that some guys are tired of getting beat down on price, just to watch the same item show up on Espay with a couple of extra zeros attached... same thing happened to my dad a few times with his trains. A guy would come up to the table, pick up a really nice piece, and complain about price, condition... you know the drill. Then, not an hour after he buys it, you see his wife polishing the daylights out of it and a tag for twice as much as my dad was asking That's the thing I love about the HAMB- seems like everybody is willing to be fair and honest and HELPFUL!!! Thanks guys
This sounds just like the crazt old guy out on Maumelle BLV. and Crystal Hill Rd. that has all of the old cars right across the street from the real big house. They've wanted him gone for years but the city won't do a thing about it. But when he's gone, those cars will be too.
I think some of these people get a kick out of telling us to fuckoff. There was a junkyard on Donithan here in El Paso. I've been begging those guys to let me in for years. One day they had a 55 Buick drug up to the front and wouldn't even talk to me about selling it. Went by there today and they have finished crushing the cars, graded it flat and have some property pimp's sign on it. My "hoard" is all for sale, if nobody wants to buy it I'll restore it someday.
$180? We're getting $300/ton for car bodies up here. Doesn't stop people from asking me if I have any $100 cars for sale though.
I had friend whos father left him a 51 4dr chevy. He was scared that his brother would take the car and scrap it. The car is ruff and I told him Id give him scrap price for it. My friend and I took it home and I ended up having to sell it. I placed and ad to sell it and I got more phone calls from scrap yards. They all asked if Id take $100 bucks for the car. I replied "That car is worth more then that...what you gunna do with it?" They all said "I work for a scrap yard and we are looking for junk cars". I replied back.."You have a better chance getting nailed by a nun then me selling you the car". I ended up selling it to a young kid. He was very happy. Hopefully it will be on the road soon.
two old dodge window vans that went away yesterday .. i am now up at 5 a.m wonderin what i missed takin out of em .. i quit figurin as the list got pretty long they went from being just moved out the back pasture to being scrapped "cuz we have em on the hook and we can take em right now"these things are 'heavy and will bring good $" ' good trans rear ends steering columns ign gone... i am a sick puppy .. fretting over ol car parts shheese hope i see the money as its the nephew who was just helping out... damn i hate the snow and mud here
the key here is persistence, if you want to get them- stop by every month or 2, and say "wanna sell that " ? eventually you catch them on a good day, and they say "WTH, sure, give me such-and-such amount $ for it and take it" there was a yard I could not even walk in, that I just bought an engine and car out of recently- it took a few years before the guy needed money and had time to mess with selling the stuff. I noticed they get more attuned to selling cars, when they hit 62-up years of age, they realize they're going to die someday soon and what good will the cars be to them then ? may as well sell now and buy something they need another thing that can be done- someone with some LAND can start buying these cars up, oil them up with drain oil, and put them on blocks, and save them- it can be done with the right determination
Considering that a typical junk car is 1.5-2 tons, it doesn't take much to figure out why they offer $100. To the average non-car person, $100 for that "junk" car seems like a good deal... Money motivates people. I do alot of work for a scrap processing company and it is absolutely unbelievable what all gets scrapped... I have seen some valuable pieces of cast iron in the auto-cast pile. When I told their supervisor that they just smashed a $750 engine block (1958 392 hemi), the look on his face was priceless... After smashing it, it is only worth $20. Just two days ago I saw another 440 block on the heap. The vast majority of many types of their scrap gets loaded into shipping containers to be shipped to - you guessed it - China. As long as Americans keep buying cheap Chinese goods, this will continue. Pretty soon, I think our coins will be worth more as scrap than as money - it might be that way already with pennies.
It's actually already been that way for a while. IIRC, nickels are worth about 9 or 10 cents melted down.
We got just over $200 for a '50 Chevy 4dr the other day. It was so rotted the body almost fell off it when they picked it up with a loader through the windows. At that price, why bother to pick pieces off it? We did take some stainless off it. But the car had sat in the woods forever and had no glass left, no hood, motor set up tight, and so on. What ticked me off though was out in the yard a '67 Cutlass wagon. Solid car, factory air, V8, nice interior, even had a registration in it. I would have paid what the junkyard did for it. Usually around here those things have no frame left - this car hardly had a spot of rust on it. But I'm going to scrap a few more - an engineless '58 Imperial, a '60 Chrysler Windsor sedan, a '72 Bonneville (haven't decided if I should keep the TH400 out of it or not), maybe even my '50 Chevy fastback parts car - and we're going to scrap a bunch of rotted out 58-60 Chevys too. We can get $170-$200 a ton here - a Suburban I bought for parts in December I actually made money on, even after pulling the trans and a bunch of parts, and throwing some junk parts, a stove and a bunch of pipe in it when I was done. I probably should add that I fully intend to go to another yard and buy better cars with some of the proceeds, though.
Traditionally, H.A.M.B.'ers build 'Rods out of old, left-over parts. At this rate, there won't be any old, left-over parts. If you know about an old junkyard, PLEASE share it with other rodders, because at $500 for each old hulk, these old junkyards are worth boo-koo $$$$$, and are disappearing FAST. Do the math.
The Jalopy Journal
