DRAYTON – The John Deere 530 is this year’s collectable tractor at the annual Drayton Farm Show.
However, since the farm show was cancelled on March 13 due to COVID-19, the Drayton Kinsmen are now billing the tractor as the “no show farm show edition.”
While it may seem that it’s a complicated process to come up with the collectable each year, farm show chair Ray Kuper said it’s pretty simple.
“We ‘voluntold’ someone in the club that this year you’re going to take care of the tractor and then they do some research and they go out and pick a tractor,” he explained.
The only stipulation is that it must be different from tractors picked in the past.
This year’s John Deere 530 is a 1:16 scale of the 1958 row crop tractor that was built in Waterloo, Iowa and weighed 9,800 pounds and had an average price of $2,400. The tractor featured a two cylinder 3.1 litre engine.
Some collector tractors, like the John Deere models, are more popular than others.
“We find a company, usually a toy tractor company that will work with us and get us a tractor and they can get us quite a few tractors or whatever and then we design it – whether we add some lights to it – and we always add our sticker to it and sometimes we paint a couple decals on there what have you,” Kuper said.
“We customize it.”
Meaning, the Drayton Farm Show is the only opportunity to purchase this particular tractor with all the bells and whistles.
Most of the purchasers are collectors who began when the tractors were first available or sometime since.
“We do get the odd new guy,” Kuper said. “It’s a tractor they’ve been looking for or it’s something unique that they like and they go and pick it up.
“So it all depends.
“Some of the John Deere lovers, like if we have an International that year they just don’t buy one.”
This year there is a limited amount of tractors for sale.
To order a tractor contact collector tractor chair Glenn Dobben at 519-323-1734 or email gwd@wightman.ca.
The Drayton Kinsmen will work with the purchaser to get delivery of the collectable tractor.
