2022 FALL PREMIER 427 With newfound time on his hands, Souder needed a hobby, and he began collecting tractors, starting with the purchase of a 1952 John Deere R Model and a 1942 John Deere LA from one of his neighbors. “It was a neighbor’s sale, and I thought I’d like to have a piece of his history,” Souder said. “He had quite a collection. He had maybe 50 tractors before he sold out. “From there, it just accelerated,” Souder said. “It’s quite a habit. You get one, you need the other one. You have the 40, and then you need the 50 and the 60, and it just accelerated from there.” Wanting to expand his new collection into the John Deeres of the 1950s, Souder said he thought it’d be nice to have one of every series from that era in the company’s history. “So, I started gathering up the 10-year collection of the 40, 50, 60, 70 and 80, and then the 20 series, and then the 30 series,” he said. As such, a large part of Souder’s collection headed to the Fall Premier bears the John Deere name with a specific focus on those models from the 1950s, and they run the gamut for the era, featuring models like a 1960 530 LP, a 1959 435 Diesel and 430 U, and a 1957 420 Crawler. There’s the 1955 John Deere 80, one of Souder’s favorites among the collection, and also a 1959 320 Southern Special, a high-clearance, built-to-order tractor that was made primarily for vegetable farmers in Florida, Louisiana and Texas and was referred to internally as a “Custom Job.” “You have the 40, and then you need the 50 and the 60, and it just accelerated from there.” – G. Lee Souder
