Farmer's retirement plan to sell 50 tractors 'worth up to £500k'

A retired farmer who once drove a tractor from Liverpool to Benidorm on a charity road run is set to sell around 50 tractors from his 60-plus collection at auction.

Dave Harrison, 76, who lives in Hale, in Liverpool, said he had driven tractors all his life and began collecting them in 1996 as a "possible hedge against pension problems".

After 30 years of collecting a range of tractors - from early 1940s types to Lamborghini and Ferrari models - Dave said the time has come to sell his beloved collection.

Dave said he would "hesitate to estimate" how much he will make from the tractors, but the collection could potentially fetch up to half a million pounds at auction.

"I'll still keep about 10 but the rest will have to go," he said.

Alongside his wheat and potato farming, Dave's hobbies had been playing cricket and badminton until "the knees gave up" - leading him to pursue collecting tractors - a hobby he described as "big boys with big toys".

"I took an interest in tractors, as I always had," he said.

"I started driving at the age of four when I was plonked on a tractor and told to drive it.

"That's been my whole life, farming and tractor driving.

"Then I decided to collect one or two as a possible hedge against pension problems and got the pleasure as well along the way.

"I don't show them but I do road runs for charity."

Dave said he would be keeping 10 or 12 of his collection for his charity runs - including a run from Liverpool to Whitby in June, which he will do with a group of almost 40 others, for the 30th year running.

The event will take seven days - using private roads to make the journey - and this year the event will raise money for Cancer Research and the Air Ambulance Service.

In 2004 Dave and three others drove tractors from Liverpool to Benidorm and back, raising about £9,000 for Cancer Research UK.

He said the return journey took just under four weeks, and they made the journey without cabs on the tractors so they were "out in the elements".

"There were four of us and we stayed in a hotel for three nights and one of the days I went down to the beach with the tractor and very swiftly got moved on by the local police who said 'you can't park on the beach'," he said.

"It sounds quite dramatic but we thoroughly enjoyed it."

The group did their second run to Benidorm 12 years later.

Dave said that now he had retired from farming he had "nowhere to store most of them", and he did not want to "leave a problem for a family who are not familiar with tractors".

"Some are not worth a great deal - but others will reach five figures," Dave continued.

"It will be sad to see them go - there's a quarter of a century of collecting there. But that's life."

Dave said it would be strange to think of his collection moving to different homes following the sale.

He added: "You've just got to accept that whoever bids the highest price, hopefully will cherish the fact that he's got it.

"You don't pay the most money for a tractor just to abuse it."

Oliver Godfrey, a director at Cheffins Machinery in Cambridgeshire, who is handling the sale, said: "Dave didn't collect just one type of tractor, while he certainly liked Masseys, this is one of the most diverse collections we've offered to date."

Bidding in the online auction starts on ends on 27 May.

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