A Sheppard Diesel tractor sold for $18,000 — more than four times the price when it was new in the 1950s — in the auction of restored, antique and just plain old tractors at Dave Bond's farm on Route 579 .
While there were plenty of tractors with the John Deere, International Harvester and Farmall labels, some brands not seen much any more were also sold Saturday, Sept. 22, including Oliver, Allis-Chalmers and a Cletrac crawler tractor.
The Sheppard SD-4, the largest the company ever made, was the highest-price sale, Bond reported Tuesday. The auction attracted hundreds of farmers from Hunterdon, Somerset, Warren and other counties, and many more watched it — and bid — over the Internet. Bids from as far away as Canada were called out by the auctioneer, who operated from a camper in the back of a pickup truck driven along the rows of tractors.
"We sold everything, it turned out very well," Bond said. There were buyers from all over, bidding online, including "one from Florida, two from South Carolina, one in North Carolina, Michigan, Virginia" for the 81 tractors and various farm implements.
A 1936 Massey-Harris Challenger was the oldest tractor for sale Saturday, and there were "a lot of tractors from the 1940s and 1950s," he said.
The Sheppard was built in Hanover, Pa., by a company that started out making other engineered products in 1937 and introduced its first tractors in 1949 at the Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg. But according to its website, the tractor industry later went into a recession and Sheppard built its last models in 1956. It turned the factory into one making power steering gears.
Sheppard continues in business, making various products for the truck, bus, rail, construction, military and recreational vehicle industries.
Bond bought this Sheppard three years ago from a man in Elmer, Salem County "He had bought it I think in Illinois," Bond recalled.
Why did Bond buy it? "I knew it was rare, and worth more than the guy was asking." According to the sale flyer, only 213 of that model were built. And it was in great shape — "original, it had never been painted, it had always been kept inside."
Bond remembers the brand well because when he was "a kid — maybe 10 or 11 — there was a dealer in Plainsboro, and he had a demonstration at a farm" near Ringoes in East Amwell Township.