Tucked away in Muir, Michigan is a huge barn that contains 25 old cars and trucks. At least that’s the number the seller says is there. He’s getting on in years and it would take way too long to sell them one at a time. So, he’s offering it as a package deal for half of what he says their collective NADA value adds up to. Available here on Hemmings Classifieds, this collection can be yours for $80,000 compared to an estimated value of $150,000.
We’re told that this assortment of vehicles was all built between 1959-75 and even includes two fire trucks. But there’s also a car buried in there that looks to be from the 1940s. Nothing has been restored and they look as though they’ve been there for a long, long time. Their condition may vary from Fair to Good and it’s doubtful anything here runs. While he suggests a couple might fire up with a tune-up, the majority will need all sorts of mechanical and cosmetic attention. As best as we can tell, here’s a partial list of what’s there.
1959 Lincoln Continental Mark IV Hardtop – sandwiched in between two other cars
1960 Lincoln Continental Mark V Hardtop – we’ve covered this car before; it was $3,550 then
1961-62 Lincoln Continental Convertible – the only car pictured that is outdoors rather than in the barn
1961 Lincoln Continental Convertible – maybe this is the same one that was photographed outside
1966 Lincoln Continental Convertible – one of the nicest cars in the group; has a minimum level of dust and dirt
1968 Oldsmobile Cutlass Hardtop – interior doesn’t look bad
1969 Chrysler Imperial Hardtop – one of the longest trunks ever on a production car
1969 Oldsmobile 98 Convertible – one of 4,288 made that year
1971 VW Karmann Ghia Coupe – bright yellow!
1972 Buick Riviera – stylish boattail
1972 Cadillac Eldorado Convertible – at least it looks like one
1975 Lincoln Continental Mark IV – like Frank Cannon drove on the TV show
This is half of what the seller says is there. Can’t make out what the others could be as some of them have been covered with canvas, which was a good idea. The seller would probably have better luck selling the cars if he would include a full list in the ad.
The Imperial looks interesting…
Thanks Russ. For sure this is a “real Barn Find,” but when I see a situation like this, it kind of makes me sad. Of course there is the “getting along in years” angle, but beyond that…. if this was handed to you to dispose of, what would you do? The seller is trying by offering it for (allegedly) half off. But without more info, we don’t even know what all is included. With it encompassing a range of makes and models in unknown condition, is there anyone who would be interested for more than pennies on the dollar? At a minimum a site visit is in order, which limits the audience.
Beyond that, to get everything into reasonable selling status, it will take a ton of work…. just getting the cars out and washed would be an effort.
So, all I can say is, good luck to the seller.
Good luck to the buyer, too!
The not-quite Golden Hoard brought to you by an 88 year old enthusiastic seller.
the Karmann Ghia looks so out of place.
Although I appreciate all old cars, I am not a “fan of land yachts”. The Jarman Ghia caught my attention. I think it says something positive that a guy who collected the large cars had a desire to save a Jarman Ghia.
Seller states: ” At age 88 years I’ve decided to sell all.”
I’m wondering how many times he’s passed on offers to sell because he was going to get them on the road some day?
For sure there’s some reason they’re all in there??? Probably owned at one time a garage??? Repair shop?? I am willing to bet that over half don’t even carry titles or registrations. But anyway, good luck is right!!! The one and ONLY WAY to make money on this deal, is to either auction or sell each and every one of them separately!!!! The END.
Um seller says he will take half of 150? Half of 150 is 75k not 80k……
Big Shaq can explain;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X09oxyIeGuY
At first seems like not so bad a deal, but then what are you getting? Not even a full list? He must have had a full list in order to determine value?
What is the condition of the frames, floor pans from sitting in a damp barn for years? Condition BEFORE they went in the barn?
VW looks nice, until you see the interior pic……
Very poor attempt to sell a hoard. His comment about pricing “half” of NADA values is absurd because I am positive that NADA does not have a “stuck in the dirt and not running for a decade” condition evaluation just under “poor condition”. Maybe half of their value if they were all cleaned, detailed, running and driving, but not waiting to be pried out of a hole they sunk into back in the 80’s. I see a two or three $10k vehicles, a handful of $5 k vehicles and the rest $1k-$3k vehicles.
I literally saw one of these cars listed in my local Craigslist classifieds yesterday, it was one of the Lincolns. Same story, though he claimed it was worth $125K restored it would take about $150K just in body work from the looks of it He thought it was worth $3350 and had a few pictures, one of which looked like it was outside of the barn.
He has sold all but 6 cars and 2 Firetrucks on Craigs list.
He has at least 2 `59 Lincolns, a Premiere hardtop and a Continental Mark IV. Plus I spot a white `61 Continental cvt., which is probably the most desirable of all his Lincolns. A nice find! GLWTA!!
25 cars but takes up the space of 40, all giants except for the VW.
Stories like this anger me so much. They are always going to get them running someday!! For YEARS my car buddies and I tried to get two old unmarried brothers to sell us their 1917 Chevrolet overhead valve V-8 roadster, in a real barn caked with mud,dust and lots of droppings. “Oh NO, no sale, we gonna fix her UP”. They both died in their nineties . The farm and barn sat there for years, tied up in family legal junk. A couple years later a grass fire took out the barn and the Chevy, Such a rare car just gone when it could have been saved. I bet a lot of you didn’t know Chevy had a V-8 like this in 1917.
Very cool, this was something I did not know. Thanks for the enlightenment!!!
https://www.autoweek.com/car-life/classic-cars/a1855076/38-years-chevrolet-small-block-v8-there-was-chevrolet-v8/
Yeah, I actually did know that . There was one in a small auto museum in Quincy,Ill. about 20 ? years ago . Open valve train and open clutch . Don’t know if the car or even museum are still there .
Smokey is right. Is there any hobby on this planet which has more lazy and deluded participants? So lazy and deluded that they actually neglect the thing they supposedly love, and allow it to deteriorate beyond saving.
It is baffling, but we’ve all seen it to one extent or another.
Agreed, Rex. Nobody leaves their stamp collection out in the rain.
Turn Derek Bieri loose in there for a month. He’d have them all running.
And the resulting videos would be worth way more than $80K.
Rex Kahrs
Best name ever 👍
Lighten up, folks. I think that we can all agree that, at least in this country, people have a right to their possessions and to do with them as they wish (as long as they’re not hurting others). People are allowed to have their dreams even if they never reach fruition. Why the bitter condemnation? Empathy is very hard to achieve much of the time. I don’t want to walk in someone else’s shoes…I have a hard enough time walking in my own.
Thank you Eric 13. I have my first truck. A 1949 GMC 1/2 ton 5 window. 228 big block. My 1st car. A 1955 Buick Special Riviera. 264 Dynaflow. My dads 1965 Ford F150 4×4 highboy sits by them. I don’t have the money to restore them or a shed to put them in. But they are mine. I look at them all the time and think of all the good times I had with them. No one should have the audacity to think that I have an obligation to sell them to them. There are enough other vehicles out there.
Correct.
Same comments every time an old collection of cars shows up here.
If it weren’t for people like this, these would have ended up in a junkyard and converted into something else many many years ago. At least now there is an opportunity for someone to come in and restore a few of them.
So, maybe we should be thanking them instead.
I’ve been to his barn! He has half of these left. The interiors of these have been mouse food over the years. There in a low ceiling and half missing siding barn, also the fire trucks are buried deep in another barn. None run, a few motors are locked up. Not an easy task to remove these!
Any seasoned car collector will be savvy enough to look very hard at these vehicles. I hope these cars find a home.
I had a 69 impala convertable with every intention of restoring and after 4 years of collecting parts and what not found I did not have the time to get it done. It was very hard for me to part with but I realized instead of letting it rot away I would be happier knowing this car was going to get done and put on the road. On condition that I had for the sale was that he got ahold of me when the car was done. He did contact me a couple of times and showed me the various stages of which it was in the process of restoration, shortly after last conversation I was involved in a nasty divorce and at the end moved out of state to the East coast to start over. Unfortunately I didn’t keep the owners information and never got to see the car on the road.
Surely taking this many gas guzzlers off the road deserves at least a boatload of carbon credits;-)
Its always interesting to see what people think the value of something is worth, scrolling through the pictures on the listing I can only get to $20 – $35 k in value because there all in need of restoration or just a parts car. If nothing else there is $25k +/- in scrap metal at today’s price.
now 1st these are good cars, but this is the biggest butt ugly cars made. they would need 20,000$ paint jobs just to make them look good ugly. i have seen these cars when they were new and yes most were ugly new. yes only the skin is ugly but they are good cars under the skin and some times a very good ugly car can be cool. yes i know many think these are not ugly but you would be the ones that want these good cars. nice to see these mostly rust free and most rusted and that is why you do not see these much and most i see are one year bodies. i even see one i would like.
25 vehicles, but 48 photos should cover all of them.
A collection of either ugly, or four doors. All junk.
The biggest known case of hoarding & not restoring vintage cars goes to Mr. Barney Pollard of Detroit. By the 1950s he and his son had amassed well over 1,100 pre-1930 cars.
In 1943 his son said Barney went to DC and offered huge amounts of scrap and old tires if he could keep his cars, and they agreed. However he did not trust the government, so many of his cars were hung from their front frame corners, hanging from railroad rail supported by phone poles. Once he had filled the racks, he would build the building around them to hide the cars, the only door being a single 30″ wide door..
I don’t remember the year, but a live cinder from a locomotive caused a grass fire that ended up burning down one of the “hanging car buildings” and the fire consumed over 100 rare old cars, mostly pre-ww1 luxury makes
Wow Bill, that is one crazy story. But honestly, how nuts-o must the guy have been to hang cars from telephone poles and build buildings around them?? It’s positively mental.
Rex,
Based on what I remember his son saying, Barney figured if he hung the cars in a vertical way in long but skinny buildings, the government scrap spotters in low-flying aircraft would not find the cars. And he could pack in about 3 times the number of cars, than had they simply been sitting on the ground. Fortunately for us, they never spotted the cars in the sheds.
Barney was in construction, specializing in building railroads, and he had lots of worn sections of rail he could use, as well as phone poles used along the tracks. The easy stuff was old roofing and siding, as it was wood. Until well after the war, no one suspected these long buildings contained hundreds of VERY rare automobiles, including multiple Rolls-Royce Silver Ghosts and Phantoms, Duesenbergs, Packard Twin-Sixes, cars from an array of other manufacturers, and many more.
His son also said Barney knew Henry Ford well, as he had built all the railroad tracks into Ford’s buildings. The 2 men didn’t like each other. When Barney made the deal with the US government during WW2 scrap drives, he also agreed to deliver a car a week to the Ford scrap processing facility.
Of course he delivered old Fords! After a couple of months, he stopped the deliveries, figuring old Henry wouldn’t complain because Barney was sending only Fords. He was correct!
I’m sure if you google Barney Pollard, you will find lots of info on him, he was well known in the Detroit area.
When the EMP goes off and nothing new will run, these will be transporting the generals and their staffs. If you’re smart and start buying points, condensers, and plugs now, you’ll be rich. (Unless the government or the invading red commies don’t confiscate your hoard!)
By a couple of the Lincoln’s, then buy a couple of the many junk barn Model “A”s and build yourselves a couple Commander Cody Hot Rod Lincoln’s!
I think the more practical thing to do would be to have an auctioneer like Van der Brink come in and clear out the collection for him. I don’t think anyone is going to buy the whole collection at once. We also don’t know if that barn is full of mice that have invited all their friends to come nest in all these cars. Just cleaning that up is a colossal undertaking in one car let alone 40 or more of them. I am partial to these party barges as I grew up in big cars and love them for their living room sized proportions. I have a big one now in my garage, a ’65 Imperial that I am having lots of fun with.
Some of the these are sold,cause I bought one from him already.