I always enjoy a day out at the auction mart, be it gimmer lamb sales, machinery or pigs (don’t ask).
As a friend commented ‘you can always find someone worse off than yourself at the sale and thus come home feeling much better about your lot’. Indeed.
I spent a chunk of Friday at the local machinery sale, inspired in part by the volume of kit on lorries heading south on the M6 from Scotland in the preceding couple of days. For the first time at a sale, where we are used to astronomical prices for frankly, knackered gear, buyers were holding back.
Yes, the hammer was falling on equipment, but dealers were adjusting reserves on the fly, and equipment you expected to find a home was passed through, including a reasonably straight series II Ford 7810, which didn’t make it past £12k. Strange times. Much grumbling from buyers about the reserves.
But maybe not much of a surprise, it’s a poor summer, money is no longer cheap and perhaps the cash squeeze is finally starting to bite.
My intelligence is limited (careful) regarding trade-in values for new deals. However if those tractors being passed out at the auction were the underwritten trade-ins, there will be in impact on the retail side of the trade. Anecdotally and locally, I also heard of a £100k price to swap deal on a five year old premium tractor, ouch.
In other news the live auction business is thriving at yours truly’s expense, as he has returned with four Oxford Sandy and Black piglets and a reversible plough this week..
Off to the tup sales this afternoon for more expensive therapy.
All the best for the week.
Andy Newbold, editor
PS – can anyone teach me to plough?