Both restored A's were over $20k, and they sold. A (rough) 1930 Phaeton on a running chassis brought just a tad over $2,500.00. Seems like the unrestored 1928 Tudor brought a little over $3k.
Parts prices were strong in the early part of the day however the layout sucked (13 long rows of parts on pallets/tables all scattered around randomly), ...and by early-afternoon the crowd seemed to have had enough trying to find stuff. The auction sales was held away form the parts with a picture of the lot showing on a big-screen TV. By 1:00 with only a ½-dozen of us there, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. They were lumping four or five pallets of parts in at once with just random stuff. A great "for example" was there was a small pallet that had 5-6 original distributor bodies in the group that I was interested in. They wound up bundling that stuff with some new spark plugs off of 'who knows what', and other non Model-A stuff. I bid $10 and no one else even bid. This went on all afternoon where they would bundle in steering columns, manifolds, transmissions with one higher-priced item such as a pair of steering arms that had new balls installed. I bid it to like $40 and won all of that stuff. Again, all I wanted was the steering arms so the columns and such were left for scrap. I probably left a couple of pick-up truck loads for an elderly scrapper named Tim that I simply felt sorry for. He was a worker but you could tell he had lived a hard life. There were rear end housings, brake housings, axles, differentials, clutch housings, ....all kinds of stuff that I let him haul off for free. I suspect by now it is well on its way to being made into a new Toyota.
The biggest downfall that I saw was there was just too much stuff for folks to process in one day. The auctioneering company was just overwhelmed. They were professional in what they did but there was just too much stuff. If Sylvia had culled thru the junk first and sent a portion to the scrap yard herself, the sale likely would have been much better. Oh well, ....live & learn!!
