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A History Lesson:
Paper items tell the story of agriculture
By Gary Van Hoozer
While attending a farm auction, perhaps you've wondered what attracts serious buyers to any particular box of items. Sometimes it's a single item, but sometimes it may be a stack of old magazines, newspapers, books, manuals, calendars and the like.
Serious buyers of those collectibles are after what are called "paper items" or just plain "paper." They know that such treasures are full of farm history and know how.
Wally Miller, Creston, Iowa, collects old farm-related paper. Wally ~ who was raised on a farm, and has worked for an implement dealer ~ first started collecting machinery-related belt buckles and literature. Now, when not delivering the mail, he attends swap meets, toy shows and steam shows, looking for paper items to buy or trade for.
"It's fun meeting other people with similar interests," he says. "Every area's a little different, and we discuss paper from things like machinery used for crops. The related crops can be anything from corn to cotton."
Paper collectibles are not only a good investment, they're good teachers.
"Old paper often contains pictures and stories on how early tractors, garden tractors, implements and the like were used and designed," he says. "Farming has changed so much and so fast that even material from the 1950s and '60s is interesting. That includes how people dressed, and (editors') attempts to include people of different nationalities. Paper from that era can remind you of when you were a kid, and what your father operated and owned."
Some literature is useful to those restoring equipment, while other pieces are simply collectible because of their artistry.
"The color sales brochures that machinery dealers had in their showrooms are excellent descriptions of their equipment, including little-known short-line implement companies down to garden tractors," Wally adds. "I especially like some of the older literature from back into the late 1800s, which has color and designs that are works of art. Even some of the early operating manuals, like ones that showed how to operate multi-grade fuel tractors, are very ornate."
Clarence Goodburn, Madelia, Minn., collects and deals by mail in agricultural paper items. He likes collecting tractor and implement sales literature, although anything in print is of interest to him. A special favorite? Anything on less common machinery.