HURON – For 80 years, the tool box had been rusting away, tied with old wire on the back of an International Harvester two-row lister planter, sitting in trees southeast of Huron.
Most of the other iron had been hauled out of the grove, taken to town and sold for scrap a few years earlier, but the planter was forgotten.
In an online auction early last week, Huron auctioneer Ben Meyer sold that eight-decades-old tool box for $10,000.
Bidders from seven states tried to buy it, but in the end it went to a South Dakota collector who Meyer said has asked to remain anonymous.
In March, Meyer was retained by the Halter and Stephen Stevens families to sell some farm equipment.
“They had some newer equipment, but also had some older vintage equipment sitting in the trees,” he said.
From the Stevens farm, the IHC two-row lister planter with the John Deere tool box was pulled out of the grove. Meyer said it was obvious the tool box did not go with the planter.
He noticed a John Deere brass tag and a serial number of 19196 and realized it was a tool box he had never seen before.
After he posted the announcement of his upcoming auction online, Meyer began getting calls from around the country from collectors asking about the Stevens tool box. But as the calls grew in number, he knew it was something special and decided to research its history.
That’s when things got interesting, he said.
“This old rusty tool box that had sat in the trees for 80 years had actually come off one of the very first John Deere tractors ever,” Meyer said.
It was from an all-wheel drive, three-wheel, four-cylinder Dain. “On a typical auction, this old box may have been kicked to the side and sold for five bucks,” he said. “But this one was special.”
In 1916 or 1917, the John Deere Plow Company got into the tractor business. In charge of designing and engineering a tractor for the company was a man named Joseph Dain.
The first four so-called John Deere Dain tractors were sent to Aberdeen, S.D.; North Dakota, Texas and Minnesota for testing.
After winning company approval, 100 of them were built in 1918 and 1919 and shipped to F.R. Brumwell, a friend of Dain’s who owned the dealership in Huron and Cavour.
Of those 100 tractors, the Stevens tool box was part of the sixth one, built in 1919, as the serial number indicated.
As Dain was traveling home from South Dakota after testing the all-wheel drive tractors, he came down with pneumonia and died.
Meyer said that at about the same time, John Deere purchased the Waterloo manufacturing plant and decided to eliminate all of the Dain tractors.
“They did not want to support service of the Dain product and they were very expensive compared to the other tractors coming to the market,” he said.
What happened next is one of the reasons why that anonymous collector likely found himself paying $10,000 for a rusty old tool box.
Meyer said he has been told and has researched the fact that John Deere told Brumwell to destroy the remaining tractors by putting a stick of dynamite in the crank case and burying the remains.
Brumwell’s ranch was northeast of Huron along the James River.
“Legend has it that the tractors were taken to the Brumwell Ranch to be destroyed,” Meyer said. “Instead of burying the tractors, they were pushed over the banks of the Jim River where they may still lay at rest today,” he said. “To my knowledge, there are only two complete JD Dain tractors in existence.”
Bidders at last week’s auction were from Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota.
Meyer said he is happy that the high bidder is a South Dakotan and that the Stevens Dain tool box will remain in the state.
But a piece of history was only one skid loader bucket away from being hauled to the scrap yard, he said.
“If it had not gone to auction, no one would have ever even known it existed,” Meyer said.
Photo courtesy of Meyer Auction Service Stephen Stevens, left, and Ben Meyer display a 100-year old John Deere toolbox, which has resided in the trees at Stevens’ farm southeast of Huron. Meyer auctioned the toolbox recently, selling it for $10,000 to an anonymous online collector. The International lister planter, with the John Deere toolbox, as it was found in the trees near Stephen Stevens farm southeast of Huron.
