RIP what a shame

"Collections are cared for". This was just plan hoarding with no obvious plans to work on any, let alone restore any.
Oh Yea: some will say he "saved" them years earlier from being scrapped.
He just prolonged their final destiny, that's all.,

It appears what he did was leave the problem to his survivors to deal with.

Said survivors tried to maximize the profits rather than just slapping a $100 price tag, u haul it, on each to get them out there.

Most of that stuff was scrap anyway.

I posted in the comments: "Calling it a car "Collection" insinuates a collection of cars protected from the harsh elements of time environment and nature. This is a gathering- a hoarding of cars left to rot while the owner was alive- and then after the passing of that owner this collection becomes the responsibility of the next of kin."

Looks like an old time junkyard to me.

Bring in a portable crusher; seems that his "collection" became a Major Headache for next kin or new owner.
With scrap prices up all-around, ideal time to "thin-the-herd" I'd guess.
Yeap: I've seen many junkyards better managed.

By the looks of it, that stuff was garbage 20 years ago!
Sadly, I see this all the time.

Is it greed? Ignorance? The compulsion to hoard?

Up here in the frozen Tundra, my Inuit guide Nanook and I have found many hoard collections like this. Some former junkyards, some still operational junkyards. One was just a random field owned by a crazy old man. The winters aren't kind to steel up here.

It wasn't long ago, a tow-truck driver acquaintance of mine told me his company is helping to clear out a well-known cache of vintage oxide and there was a Gremlin among them. He asked if I wanted it and could even deliver Of course I was interested. Regardless of what year it could still be a wealth of parts. Several days go by, I don't hear from my friend and I soon forget about it. He came back in the store a few weeks later, my memory was triggered so I asked about the Gremlin. "Oh that.... yeah, we hooked a chain around the crossmember and pulled.... the engine and fenders came out from under the tree but the rest stayed. Didn't think you'd want me dropping off a car in two pieces."

And he told me that 95% of what they pulled out was like that. Y'know, 30 years ago when we played in that stuff as kids, it might have been salvageable. Just heard of another local legend, a big block Nova SS got crushed by the snow load a few weeks ago when the lean-to it was under gave way.

We had a junk yard in South Jersey owned by an old timer. He would never sell anything let alone a whole car.
When he died two rival local yards hounded his daughter at the funeral for rights to scrap the cars. Couple low lifes there.
Before the yard was cleaned up after the grieving period, my friend and I went in and purchased tools, equipment, and a couple parts cars.
Soon after every car that was in the yard was crushed. All the parts that were taken off by the old timer over the years and stored in trailers were loaded in dumpsters for scrap.

And if you told the dummy dick 25 years ago what would happen he’d still not have cared. I’m sure some did. “Your ‘collection’ will be crushed because you’ll have ruined it.” Care about grandkids? Nope. Instead of getting good money for some of the coolest stuff when it was usable, he got them scrap value. Plus we all lose out on Americana.

Shrewd.

Back in the late '80s, early '90s, I came across an article in my local paper about the auction of a car hoard that had been sitting outside for decades. The owner had died, and his family decided to auction everything off. 1920s, '30s, '40s cars. The article quoted his daughter as saying people had approached him for years and years about buying individual cars. "$5,000.00," he'd say, even though the cars were rotting into the ground. Never sold any of 'em.
At the auction, entire cars were going for five, ten bucks each, because everything was rusted to hell after sitting out in the elements for decades. I could swear the article said some went for as little as $2.00. Buyers were looking at them and saying, "Maybe I can save that hood ornament." "I need those hubcaps."
Sometimes they don't even have to be in a field. I know of a '67 Pontiac Catalina 4-door that's been parked at a self-storage facility since at least 1985. First time I saw it, it looked pretty decent from the highway, apart from a low tire. Now most of the paint is gone, along with the wheel covers, and that low tire has been flat for years and years.

Plain and simple - Hoarding is a mental disorder. A person sees value in items that have NONE. Or the person sees irrational unrealistically high value in their items. If you store your "collection" in the woods or a field- a tin shanty you are not a collector but a junk hoarder.

Bet everyone of us has a collection of stuff others would call junk that we irrationally value and keep, just in case. I have two 904's and two A833's I've been hoarding for 20+ years and they are not for sale. Will I ever use them? Probably not. But they are mine to use, or not, as I please.

So careful tossing the hoarder line around, plenty out there could say it applies to you too.

That's what it looks like to me too. It's too bad a lot of those places get crushed like that. I've seen some on youtube or written up online where before it happened they did post about it somewhere to give people a chance to buy stuff first.

Those cars would be a goldmine to someone with intelligence to sell. Staggering the amount of cars that still had rockers unrusted. Up here in MN that is unheard of. I just think of how many streetrods could have been made. Wish someone could have stepped in to sell them for more than $100 per pound.

"I have two 904's and two A833's I've been hoarding for 20+ years ." That hardly compares to a hoard or rotting hulks sitting outside taking up acres of land that your daughter/son/ elderly brother or sister would be responsible for getting rid of in the event of your passing.

Right. But I think the difference lies in the fact that a) those aren't being made anymore and have some kind of value; and b) if somebody offered you a fair price because they needed one, you'd more than likely let it go! and I can safely assume MOST of us here are like that.

But if somebody comes along and offers you $50 for that complete 440 you've stuffed in the corner, you're gonna tell 'em to piss up a rope.


My mother seems to have this compulsion right now for collecting broken windows, cans of paint and egg cartons. Pretty sure those cans of paint that have been in the basement for as long as I can remember have NO use anymore. They've got such a thick, dry layer covering the paint, I can't CHISEL through it. But she refuses to throw them out.

I find it interesting how many people feel its their right to determine what a person does or doesn't with the stuff he has purchased with his own money.

For many years I collected a lot of Mopar performance cars because they were cheap at the time, and I had a place to park them. The truth was, most were in pretty bad shape when they arrived at my place, but I was able to buy them, and haul them to my little chunk of America. From the road that went past my place, most still looked great, and from my kitchen window, they looked great too. If someone showed up and wanted to buy something, I would tell them it wasn't in very good condition, and upon looking at their desired project, they soon changed their tune. They determined that since I allowed it to get into such bad shape, I should just give it to them, the conversation promptly went south in a hurry. When I bought those treasures, I bought them based on the value of the good parts, and I would sell them the same way. Most of the guys that stopped by thought a car with a 4 speed, 3:23 geared, sure grip 8 3/4 that was running and driving and a really good original 26" HD radiator with a rusty b body wrapped around it wasn't worth $200. They expected me to sell it to them for less then the going scrap value. At that price I could scrap it myself, save the good parts, and be way ahead, or I could just leave the good parts in the car somewhat protected from nature, enjoy the view, then get the same (or more) scrap out of it when it was no longer usable (which was what happened to that B body 5 years later, the 4 speed set up alone brought $450). To many here, that would make me a hoarder. Call me what ever you want, it doesn't bother me.

When we moved into town several years later, I scrapped 13 Mopar cars and trucks, many were nearly rusted into the ground, but most were already rust buckets when i got them. I still made a lot of money off the parts, and I know I got more for the scrap then what they were worth when I bought them. There sure was a lot of guys mad at me because I let these cars and trucks go to waste and wouldn't sell them, but none of those guys came around and even offered to buy any of them.

Your opinions of what people do with their stuff is ill-conceived. How many of you have projects that haven't been touched for years? How many have the "next project" already lined up for after you finish up the current project that has been dragging on for 10+ years? Congratulations, you are a hoarder too, but with smaller numbers. Maybe you should sell your next project to me for scrap price (could you deliver it too?), then I won't call you a hoarder. Gene

All I see is someone's private junk yard. Years ago, there were lots of farms around here that had rows of 'retired' cars, trucks and equipment used by the family over the years. It's a shame that the cars in the video were crushed, though, and they were in better shape than most of the cars I bring back to my place!

From watching this, were most of these under cover? Wow.

Fortunately, not many MoPars that I saw.