Welcome to Modern Agriculture!
There’s a bunch of interesting iron crossing the block over the next week. At the end of the day, I couldn’t pick just one, so we’ll look at three of my favorites! Two orange ones in Kansas, and also a beautiful red one in Iowa!
It’s pretty rare to find an Allis Chalmers 616 Cotton Picker! This one lives in Kansas until next Tuesday, when it goes to a new owner!
If I had to guess, I’ll bet at least half of you had no idea that AC made a cotton picker! (And full disclosure... I didn’t either until a week or two ago when Mark Sullivan and I were talking about this auction!)
During the ’60s, there were essentially four major players in the cotton harvesting market: International Harvester, John Deere, John Rust/Ben Pearson, and Allis Chalmers. Plenty of other farm equipment companies had pickers and strippers, but those four were the big players. The only one that had a unique design was IH; the rest licensed designs and technology from John Rust/Ben Pearson (including AC).
John Rust developed the first mechanical cotton harvester in the 1930s. When he started building them, life in the Delta changed forever. In the mid-40s, Allis Chalmers licensed the designs and started building them in Gadsden, Alabama.
What you see here is one of the later models. It’s a two-row picker, and it essentially mounts on a D19 turned around backwards, with a D17 rear end. Very unique!
Evidently, these are fairly scarce. I talked to Josh VanTuyl, the farmer who owns it, and he tells me that it’s a 1965 model. Allis only built 30 that year, and this one is No. 25. He bought it from the original owner in Arkansas, and he suspects that it never actually picked very much cotton back in its working years. It had always been barn-kept, and it’s as original as the day is long! All original paint and everything! The toolbox even came with some NOS spindles and parts!
It sells at Josh & Rick VanTuyl’s sale on June 8 in Kansas, hosted by our friends at Sullivan Auctioneers. With five days left on the sale, bidding is at $1,200, but who knows where it’ll go? It’s definitely a piece of Interesting Iron in my book!
This beautiful 1965 Farmall 1206 is the 87th one ever built! Nicely restored, too! It sells on June 9, 2021 in Pocahontas, Iowa!
The 1206 is an Interesting Iron-certified icon, plain and simple. Generally, they bring good money in any shape (even the ones in rough shape go for more than you’d think). This one, however, is not rough – not at all! It’s ready to turn some heads at the next tractor show!
Furthermore, this Farmall has an early serial number, which adds to the desirability. According to the serial number, it’s the 87th one built!
The team at Sale Barn Realty & Auction will send this beauty home with a new owner on June 9. This has to be one of the biggest sales Rick’s held in quite a while – the lot is absolutely packed!
This first-year Allis Chalmers Two Twenty is one of 934 built in 1969. Sullivan Auctioneers will sell it at a Kansas Allis collector’s auction on June 8, 2021!
This Two Twenty is another one on Rick & Josh VanTuyl’s sale in Kansas next week. The Two Twenty was the big-horse row crop tractor in AC’s lineup for 1969. Allis rated it at 151 engine hp., and Nebraska-tested at about 136 horse at the PTO shaft. The factory in West Allis, Wisconsin, only turned out 1,865 of ’em during the production run, and this one sits right at about the halfway point.
It’s pretty much all-original, too. Josh told me that he’s the second owner, and he bought it from a farmer who didn’t have a barn to keep it in. It had a Hiniker cab on it, hence the difference in color. Josh pulled the cab off of it and sourced some original open station fenders for it. He used it for a little fieldwork now and then, but it was always more of a toy than anything. "That one was my baby," he said. If I had to guess, this will be the one that’s the toughest for him to let go of.
Mechanically, this tractor is rock-solid. Routine maintenance was never missed, and if it needed anything, it always got it. The motor is very healthy, too; Josh had it on a dyno not too long ago and it pulled 175 without even breathing heavy!
If you’re looking for a really solid example of Allis muscle right now, you’ll have to look pretty hard to find a better one than this Two Twenty. They say they’re only original once, and that’s the case with this tractor, too. All-original paint, and only 5,248 original hours on a pretty stout 426! As far as I’m concerned, that’s Interesting Iron-certified all day long!
I’d be pretty surprised if this didn’t get close to $20K or maybe even a little more. It’s sitting at $8,750 right now, but with five days left, it’s bound to keep climbing!
Hi! I’m Ryan, and I love tractors. It doesn’t matter if it’s a showpiece, an oddball, or seen its share of life ... if it’s unique and it’s listed by one of our auctioneer partners at Tractor Zoom, I’m going to show it off a little bit! This equipment is all up for auction RIGHT NOW so you can bid on them! I think they’re cool, and I hope you will, too. This is Interesting Iron!