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Kenny Scheidt’s collection of John Deere collectibles began with a couple of familiar tractor models and grew to include more than 200 pieces three decades later.
Earlier this year he decided to sell the collection and ideally wants to pass on the entire 200-plus pieces to just one buyer. He placed an ad on social media with the asking price of $22,000.
Scheidt’s collection fills several display cases, and wall-mounted shelves fill the front bedroom in the Scheidts’ home in Luverne.
This spring Scheidt decided he would liquidate his collection.
“I think it’s time,” he said. “When the room was full, I kind of quit buying them.”
Scheidt admitted he doesn’t recall why the collection began and eventually grew to hundreds of pieces. He recalled the collection started small in 1988.
“I bought some (toy tractor replicas) that I drove, then I started to go to (toy) shows,” he said.
The replicas date back to the late 1960s when Scheidt, at age 15, worked at farms around Adrian.
The first farm experience taught him how to drive the red-and-white International Harvester tractors. The second farm owner favored the green-and-yellow John Deere equipment, and Scheidt developed the same preference.
At the toy shows he joined liked-minded collectors as a member of the Two-Cylinder Club that allowed him to purchase limited edition collectibles of John Deere tractors and equipment.
He concentrated on completing the series that replicated the life-sized John Deere tractors. He later added other equipment such as planters and tillage equipment and other items like semitractor-trailers, coin banks, racecars and antique trucks with the John Deere logo.
Toys became more sophisticated in the 1970s and 1980s.
“When the tractors first came out, they were just kids’ toys,” he said.
The mass-produced, inexpensive early toys of the 1950s lacked the details that Scheidt sought for his collection. As the popularity of toy collecting grew when Scheidt was a young adult, so did the details included in the models.
The toy shows’ popularity meant a demand for detail-oriented toy replicas.
Scheidt special-ordered several models from vendors he met at the shows. The vendors would take a mass-produced toy and add rubber tires, levers, hydrolytic hoses and other minute details of its life-sized model.
Scheidt plans to keep these one-of-a-kind models that cost hundreds of dollars to complete, but the rest of the collection is for sale.
Among other collections are steel-wheeled tractors, early 1980s models or New Generation selections.
Scheidt has steered clear of purchasing toys manufactured in the last decade.
“The new ones are not as detailed,” he said.
It was the details that were discussed at length at the toy shows and at toy auctions throughout the U.S. But the traveling and collecting has lost its appeal for him.
“In the beginning, it was fun to travel to shows and talk to people because you had something in common,” he said. “Young people don’t collect.”
Scheidt can be reached at kennyscheidt73@gmail.com.