81 Vintage Cars Rusting in a Kansas Scrapyard Can Be Saved for $425,000
This might not be the best investment, but…
Out in the boonies of Belleville, Kansas, 81 classic cars and trucks are sitting in a scrapyard, waiting for someone to save them from slowly rusting away. But the attention they need may never come around because let me tell you, they ain't cheap.
This collection of vintage vehicles, parts, and engines is the subject of a Hemmings ad, whose few photos and short description do little to justify the $425,000 asking price. We've reached out to the seller for a more complete list of the vehicles, though there would need to be some special gems hiding to bring up the value of the mostly-weathered cars included in the listing.
We can identify Chevrolet AK-series and 1939 Ford cab-over-engine trucks, a 1938-ish GMC pickup, an International Harvester KB1 (flanked by what might be a surplus Humvee), and a wagon that resembles a Packard 160. The Humvee notwithstanding, prices for vehicles as rare as these are hard to nail down, though they'd easily be worth six figures together—if they were in good condition, which they sadly aren't. The International and Packard have smashed windows, covered by a trash bag and tarp respectively, and the GMC has no windshield whatsoever. All three, presumably, have trashed interiors.
Worse still are the vehicles' storage locations, as all but the Ford are depicted outdoors where the four seasons are doing their darnedest to make them rust away. Some of the engines shown above may be salvageable, but even they would need to offer some rare spares to be worth the hefty price of admission.
Should the owner of this Kansas scrapyard find any takers whatsoever, we imagine bids for the lot will be closer to four figures than six. Belleville's practically in the middle of nowhere, after all, so even the good stuff might not be worth the time, effort, and gas needed to haul it away for a full restoration.
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