Fair Price on Pair of Radioactive Balers?

Facebook follower Kevin N. from Wis: “Pete - While searching Google Maps in the exclusion zone around the Fukushima nuclear disaster (Japan - March 11, 2011 tsunami disaster) looking at abandoned houses, I found these two balers tucked away at an abandoned little farm. What would a fair price be for a pair of radioactive balers?”

RadioactiveNHbalers-Fukishima-FBmsgKevinWI

Pete’s reply: Ok, I admit it, this one officially stumps me! Never been asked before about used values on radioactive farm equipment. I began compiling auction sale price data 30 years ago, in 1989, so I missed out on compiling auction sale price data around Harrisburg, PA after the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident on March 28, 1979 and also the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in northern Ukraine on April 26, 1986.

Apparently Springtime is when nuclear disasters tend to happen.

Kinda crazy the images Google Maps provides these days, isn’t it? We are definitely living in a “Big Brother” age. Satellite imagines of anything and everything. Even pair of square balers parked in a shed in a nuclear fall out zone.

My Facebook follower friend Kevin N. from Wisconsin has a very keen eye for balers. Check out his Massey Ferguson 10 baler he runs behind his 1952 Farmall Super M…vintage cool!

IHCSuperM-MF10baler-FBKevinNix-WI

Back to the topic of disaster affected used farm equipment values, I have of course seen over the past 30 years, lot of hurricane flood damaged equipment sold afterwards at auction. Unfortunately we may see some of this again the rest of 2019 into 2020, not from hurricane, but from the extensive and terrible Spring flooding out in Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri. The type of auction flood damaged equipment sells on seems to play a big part in what it goes for. Typically have seen flood damaged equipment sold en mass on large wholesale consignment auctions. Buyers aren’t exactly sure where the tractor or piece of equipment came from, sale prices tend to run pretty light. Conversely if the flood damaged equipment items sell on a traditional farm sale type auction, then prices are lower than normal yes, but definitely higher than the wholesale auctions.

Pete
Machinery Pete
www.MachineryPete.com