Economy

Most Expensive Tractor Ever Sold

WVIK, Quad Cities NPR | By Herb Trix

Published May 9, 2022 at 11:43 AM CDT

You may have heard of antique cars selling for millions of dollars… but antique tractors?!

It's the most expensive tractor ever sold.

The 1913 CASE 30-60 is an impressive machine.

“This tractor was huge. It’s called a prairie tractor, I mean it was used to break virgin prairie in the farming fields and pull an eight bottom plow.”

That’s Kurt Aumann with Aumann Auctions – which sold the tractor for a whopping 1-point-4 million dollars. That’s not only the most expensive antique tractor ever sold, it’s the most expensive tractor ever sold, period.

Aumann says the tractor belonged to a collector in Iowa who recently passed away. It sold it to a museum in Connecticut.

It’s one of only five models in existence.

Economy

Herb Trix

A native of Detroit, Herb Trix began his radio career as a country-western disc jockey in Roswell, New Mexico (“KRSY, your superkicker in the Pecos Valley”), in 1978. After a stint at an oldies station in Topeka, Kansas (imagine getting paid to play “Louie Louie” and “Great Balls of Fire”), he wormed his way into news, first in Topeka, and then in Freeport Illinois. While a graduate student in the Public Affairs Reporting Program at the University of Illinois at Springfield (then known as Sangamon State University), he got his first taste of public radio, covering Illinois state government for WUIS. Here in the Quad Cities, Herb worked for WHBF Radio before coming to WVIK in 1987. Herb also produces the weekly public affairs feature Midwest Week – covering the news behind the news by interviewing reporters about the stories they cover.

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