John Deere GP - 1932 Orchard Model

[Harry]

Imagine if you will, a young couple buying a farm in the late sixties from an older man and his wife that was ready to move to Florida. This was Oswego, NY when you could buy 48 acres of farm land with a house and three barns for $13,500. Not only that, but the barns were full of old equipment.

In one barn, there were scads of model T parts, a John Deere single row corn harvester and this old girl. I hooked a chain on her and pulled her out into the daylight. Sure looks like it could be made to run. Original decals! And it had the extension rims for a third row of lugs!

I towed it up to the garage, checked the oil level, put some gas in it and flipped the flywheel. Nothing. It had to be fuel or spark because the compression was more than you could pull over. If it wasn't for the compression relief valves, you wouldn't start it at all.

I cleaned the magneto points and tried again. Ka-Bam! What a sound! It was running! Quick, shut off the compression relief valves. This old babe was ready to go to work! A real stump puller!

I had her in my possession from 1968 until 1979 when I got stupid and decided to move. I sold her cheap, not knowing that this would be a prized collector item one day. I'll make the long story short - here she is: (This is from a scanned 35mm slide.)

[Andrew Albrecht]

Harry: What the heck were you thinking. I guess we are all a little dumb when we are younger and get alot smarter later in life. I know it holds true for me anyway.

[Craig A]

1995 is not THAT long ago to have been so.............uh................unthinking.....
ESPECIALLY for a GP with extensions.
A set of just GP steel is going for way over $2000 now.
So Harry, are you gonna say what you sold it for......
Craig

[Harry]

1995 is the date first published on the photo. The date sold was 1979 - to someone in Syracuse, NY. No way to know from there.

Those were the days (68 - 78) when I wanted to have one model of every John Deere ever made and I had the room to store them. What a crazy stupid dream!

Here's one that I ran onto in northern Idaho and me without a trailer (again). For sale and ready to go. This was taken in 1974, but the date first published is today, 2004.

[Joe Musser]

I've said it once and I will most likely say it again. What I wouldn't give for a time machine. I would love to be able to go back and not sell the things I have but if I hadn't sold some of those things I would not have been able to get the things I have now altho it is a lesson learned I have become much more of a packrat now. Joe M.

[Bill Decker]

Wouldn't mind having a Waterloo myself, but $27,000 is just a wee bit too rich for me. The GP to have is one of the early ones that were once a Model C but were reworked. Or, if you got the BIG $$$ go for a GPO Crawler, if you can find one that someone wants to part with.

[Kevin Roth]

Hey Harry, It was GP John Deere that got me interested in old tractors. My grandfather had one in the corner of the barn when I was a kid. He did a lot of custom butchering of cattle then. He sold the hides to a man in Jamestown, ND. The hide buyer bugged my grandfather to sell him the GP until he gave in and sold it to him for $50.00. That was in the early 70's. We pulled it out of the barn and tried to start it but it wouldn't run. I was too young to get him to keep it but I did get his C Allis Chalmers that he started farming with in 1940. So it goes, Kevin

[johndeere_happyfarmer]

Harry that is always good to here an old john deere fireing off. Thats similar to what happened to me. When my great-grandpa died he left this old 47' john deere D. With the original everything on it. It took a little tweaking but we got here to fire off and do some work. Now we are in the process of restoring it. If anyone who reads this or if you harry have any tips on restoring tractors please write me back.

[FarmallJeff]

All the Waterloo i have seen latly the $27,000 would be the down payment or 50%. We have all done it at one point in time i did the same thing years ago with cars No use complaining to late now who would have guessed.
JEFF

[ronm]

When I was shop foreman at a JD dealer back in the 70's, the salesman one day drug in an old rust bucket of a tractor w/a 30 gal. barrel for a radiator. I had never seen anything like it, but he said it was a Waterloo Boy...we messed w/it a while, & danged if it didn't run! It sat around the yard for several years until the store was sold, I would fire it up once in a while just for fun, & drive it around the building. Very unique sound, similar to a D but slower & throatier... One day an older fellow walked over from the trailer park next door when we had it running, he said "I knew what that was as soon as I heard it"...anyhow, when the dealership was sold, the old owners sold the WB to a collector in Kansas, & I heard it was restored, but haven't seen it since...cool old tractor, I wish I had it back ...
Ron in CO...

[Dave Preuhs]

Same old story, was raising 4 kids in the 70's, and not much money for old tractors but I did manage to scrounge enough every once in a while to buy an old Hart Parr or two, and today I am sure glad I did it when I did. At that time you could buy any old prairie tractor for 12 to 15 grand and it would be running for that price. Even the old Waterloo Boy tractors, you could have them for less than 10 grand but look at them now, and as far as I'm concerned they are not even rare. So that brings up the old question----what should we be putting away today that will keep rising like the old tractors did?? The tractors they make nowadays won't be worth anything with all the hydraulics, electronics, and computers in them, the dealers can't fix them without hiring a MIT grad, let alone the collectors working on them 50 yrs. from now. Oh well, that's progress i guess.

[Tom R. Paur]

Yeah, the GP is special, not particularly successful at the time fo JD, but a real thorougbred none the less. Today I began tearing down my 1929 GP, and expect to have it parade-ready by next year. Dad bought this tractor on steel about 1949, in north central MN, and it was our 'big' tractor. We also had a '38 F12. Dad converted the GP to rubber after a year or so, and I spent much of my young life on it, doing field work. It's thorughly worn out, but parts are readily available. I'll transfer the fender patches Dad made to the new fenders when I get to that part. I can hardly wait to tool up & down the roads here on Camano Island WA, with the 2 cyls loudly announcing their presence through the 6" long, muffler-less exhaust pipe. Tom

[Jordan]

i was at a show today and there were various deers driving around and those two cyliders with no mufflers was like music to my ears