Collecting hobby turns into farm toy business
The Country Today, December 8, 2004
By Heidi Clausen
CUSHING – It’s not quite Santa’s workshop – and they bear no resemblance to the jolly old elf and his wife – but Bruce and Patsy Gustafson have been hard at work this holiday season, fulfilling the wish lists of area toy farmers.
Although it’s well off the beaten path, the Gustafsons’ Leaning Pine Farm Toys has become a must-find destination for farm toy collectors. Many people shopped for stocking stuffers Dec. 4-5 at the couple’s second annual Christmas open house, which included door prizes, lunch and discounts.
The rest of the year, they’re open by chance or appointment.
“We might go a month without seeing anybody,” Mr. Gustafson said of their store in rural Polk County.
About 20 times a year, the Gustafsons go to their customers, filling their trailer to the roof with boxes of toys to sell or trade at toy shows throughout Wisconsin and Minnesota.
The Gustafsons recently sold their 35-cow dairy herd to focus more on farm toys.
Dealing in toys requires patience and hard work and, as the Gustafsons attest, it’s not wildly profitable. But the couple is hard pressed to put a value on the fun they have, hunting for the next addition to their own collection and visiting with dealers and collectors.
“It pays its own way,” Mr. Gustafson said with a smile.
He was hooked on the farm toy hobby almost 20 years ago when his mother, Margaret, gave him his first farm toy – a 1/16th-scale John Deere A that continues to be his favorite piece because of the close relationship he shared with his mother, who has since died.
“He was admiring it in a magazine when he was having coffee with her one day,” Mrs. Gustafson said. “We had no money to buy toys, with young kids.”
“I had wished my dad would have bought one” for the farm, Mr. Gustafson said.
Growing up on the farm, he didn’t have very many
toys to play with, he recalled. Now he can “play” with toys
all day.
Since that first special tractor, he has picked up toys here and there.
Olivers are his weakness. The couple’s collection includes about
300 farm toys of various scales and 100 pedal tractors.
As their collection grew, the couple decided a few years ago to try buying and selling some toys. They acquired their first toys from a man looking to sell his entire personal collection.
“I encouraged him to buy that first collection; the money will come from someplace,” Mrs. Gustafson said.
“I’m the conservative one,” Mr. Gustafson added.
They still buy most of their toys from area collectors selling entire collections, but they also pick up rare finds and handmade toys to offer a broad mix of all brands – new and old, big and small.
Specialty pieces usually sell right away, they said, while the shelf models are a little harder to move. Inventory is rotated about every year.
To stay competitively priced, the Gustafsons keep up with books and magazines.
“We’re pretty close to the auctioneer when buying collections,” he said.
They set up at their first toy show in October 2001, in Turtle Lake.
“We didn’t think we’d like it,” Mr. Gustafson remembers, “but we came home and started planning for Colfax,” which has a show in February.
Each year, the couple logs thousands of miles traveling to shows, usually on Sundays. They have left as early as 2 a.m. to drive to a show, where setup alone can take a couple of hours. The farthest they have driven is Randolph, six hours away.
One of their most successful and busiest shows this year was the three-day Wisconsin Farm Technology Days in September.
But shows aren’t all work and no play for the Gustafsons, who view the events more as a social gathering. It’s also an opportunity to network and learn from other dealers.
“It’s our outing,” she said.
They try to schedule a few toy shows in areas where their four grown children live, so they can stop by.
They agree that the best part of the shows is the almost instant camaraderie with fellow toy collectors, who often reminisce about certain tractors or implements they grew up with on the farm.
The Gustafsons have many standing orders from collectors who would like them to locate a certain piece for them.
Mrs. Gustafson has grown to love the hobby just as much as her husband does.
“It’s nice when both of us enjoy it, otherwise it wouldn’t be much fun,” Mr. Gustafson adds.
After the first couple years, she picked up many of the tools of the trade and doesn’t “panic when he leaves the table” at a toy show.
Like many other businesses, farm toy sales follow the ebb and flow of the general economy, the Gustafsons said.
“You could tell the economy was bad two years ago. The extra money wasn’t there to buy toys,” Mrs. Gustafson said, but “it’s coming back.”
Internet sales, through Web sites such as eBay, cut into their business, she said, but online shoppers often miss out on an important part of the hobby – the conversation.
“We have the knowledge on farm toys,” she said.
What once was a sideline business to the dairy farm has grown into an almost full-time venture, forcing them to make the difficult decision to sell the cows this fall.
“We’re too busy to miss them,” said Mr. Gustafson, who had farmed about 30 years.
“This is still just a hobby, but it’s also time-consuming,” he said. “When we went to shows, we had to hire someone to do chores, so we didn’t make any money – or lost - but we had fun.”
To supplement the farm toy income, Mr. Gustafson works part time at a lumberyard; Mrs. Gustafson is office manager at Burnett Dairy in Alpha.
After operating in their cramped garage for a couple of years, they erected their small store in 2003, with an entire wall devoted to John Deere, which continues to be the hot seller.
“We had a lot of neighbors stop in because they thought we were nuts,” Mrs. Gustafson said.
“There are people who can’t believe there’s a market to sell toys and that there’s a whole gymnasium full of dealers (at the National Farm Toy Show in Dyersville, Iowa) where people pay to come in and buy toys,” he adds.
Also as business has grown, the Gustafsons have found they
have less time and funds to put toward their own collection.
“Our own collection is not growing as fast,” he said.
But that doesn’t mean they have stopped looking. There are still many pedal tractors they’d like to add to their collection, if the right bargain comes along.
“A collector is never done collecting; they’re always looking for another piece. That part of me will never leave. I’ll always be a collector at heart,” he said.
“We want it to stay fun and not become work,”
he said.
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