I attempted to post this yesterday with a few pix & it never went through, so here it is sans pix:
I decided to fly instead of investing 4 days of driving & gallons of expensive diesel into a trip in which I may not buy anything. Returning in a couple of months when the weather is cooler prior to the Int'l Meet would be the best way to haul any cars I purchased. I got a buddy pass from my cousin, & flew to Omaha, driving the rental car 200 mi to Armour on Thurs afternoon. I arived at Ken's early on Friday morning to begin inspecting the cars & parts. Had I not already been aware of the situation, I would have been disappointed. The cars were all well picked over and many had severe rust issues. Very few had even one good fender or door remaining. As expected, C-K cars were in very short supply & were rough. He had enough loose parts to waste a few hours of the auctioneers time, but most was on the junky side & included about zip in the way of good C-K or Avanti stuff. A scrap bidder had a standing offer of $75.00 on all of the near complete vehicles, so opening bids had to be $80.00 unless the unit was very incomplete. A good crowd of bidders, maybe 200 or more, in addition to the i-net & phone bidders, was on hand on Sat morning and most stayed around, enduring the 108 deg. heat until near the close of the sale, since the sellers wisely saved the restored & good rebuilders for near the end. Thank goodness Ken had plenty of shade trees, a nice breeze was blowing, & the humidity was very low. It is a safe bet that many attendees went home with sunburns. Parts prices were dirt cheap for the most part, with some cheesy sedan body parts going for $2.50 ea. One local scarfed up tons of marginal quality sheetmetal to try to sell on ebay, even though he did not have a clue as to what much of it was for. I promised Ken that I would not let anybody get anything too cheap, & I tried to keep my word. Yvette VanDerbrink was a well-organized, fast moving auctioneer well experienced in liquidating large car collections, not to mention a real cutie, and did a great job. She has 2 more big sales coming up soon for MoPars & 409 Chebbies. I bought a couple of trucks with solid cabs, one "M", & one "R" which I will just take the cabs off of and part out at Ken's. I also bought a 49 biz cpe. & a pair of '48-51 Starlight Coupe solid body shells, a pair of solid 39 Commander sedan bodies; and 41 Pres. & 57 Hawk parts cars, which are now on ebay(shameless plug). Most cost me only $80.00-$150.00 ea. I bought about 6 pallets of small parts, 2 engines for about $10.00 ea., some bumpers, 6 transmissions, & a large pile of sheet metal parts. The largest purchase I made was for the tractor w/forks & fr end loader. It was a buy at $2500.00. I decided not to try to drive it home! I was tempted to buy one of the good unrestored cars, which all went way too cheap. His good original 41 Pres brought a chintzy $4000.00, the '31 & 35 Dictator sedans sold for about $3K ea. A very decent 38Pres sedan street rod project sold for less than $2k, and a 38 Commander sold for $2500. or so. A good buildable J-10 closed just under $4K. The stunning restored J-10 truck w/289 & a/c should have opened at 20K, but closed at $17,250.00. The nice red 34 wrecker & the beautiful red M ser 1/2 tn were both steals for around $6K. The 58 Mercedes which Ken brought from Germany was stolen by a local for $1800.00. I saw many people I knew, & met many new Studebaker enthusiasts & had a great time. Every aspect of the sale was conducted just as any who know Ken Voigt would expect. I just feel the Studebaker community let him down a bit by failing to bid up on his things or by not coming at all. I am glad I went & am looking forward to returning.