2008 National Farm Toy Show Tractor

This years show tractor is the Allis Chalmers 7580 4wd Black Belly. This is the 7th tractor in the 4wd series produced by Ertl for the Toy Farmer. This is a very nice model and features detailed tires and wheels, cab glass, 3pt hitch, and a good overall finish.

Really my only complaint about this tractor is on the 1/64th version of the model the roof of the cab. It is made of white plastic and feels flimsy, not matching the rest of the otherwise high quality model. It would have taken very Little time and effort to simply paint the cab top instead of just using colored plastic.

If you would like to read more about the classic 4wd series of National Farm toy show tractors you may enjoy the article I wrote on all of the previous models from last year. http://zacstractors.blogspot.com/2007/11/starting-in-2003-toy-farmer-and-ertl.html

Look Familiar?

Ertl has decided to release their own black version of a Case IH combine. I guess I can feel good that I made and posted the black combine before the boys at Ertl, but it was nice to have the only one out there. Technically this black version of the new Premiere will be "Gunmetal," but it looks pretty black to me. Don't get too excited though, this combine will be extremely limited production, and if the packaging is handled like the other Authentic series tractors (Clear front so you can see whats inside) The dealers will open every one of them so that they can find the limited editions and sell them for hundreds of dollars.

In fact when I was at the national farm toy show in Dyersville I posed this exact problem to Ertl. I said that it wasn't fair that us collectors have no chance at getting a limited edition muddy or "gunmetal" tractor because the dealers get to them first and jack up the prices. The problem is that the dealers pay the same amount for these limited tractors as they do for the normal ones. So they make a huge profit, and we have to pay much more for them instead of just being lucky enough to stumble upon one in the dealership.

Ertl's response to my statement: "We can only do so much." This is from someone representing Ertl at the National farm toy show in the Ertl showroom. Generally I love Ertl and everything they do for the hobby, but this "scalping" of limited tractors is unfair to collectors, and undermines the purpose of the limited edition tractors.

More on the National Farm toy show in future articles.

10,000 Posts

Sometime last week this site hit 10,000 posts which is excellent timing considering that this weekend was the national show, and I started the blog shortly after last years show, so inless than a year we have had over 10,000 visits.

Thank you very much for taking time to read my blog. I will try to get more articles up, I relaly enjoy writing them, but school comes first.

To celebrate the 10,000th visitor and 1 year anniversary Zac's Tractors will be producing a very limited number of a special edition custom tractor. I will be customizing a few of these mainly because I have always wanted to do a custom tractor and this seems like a good excuse. Stay tuned, and within the next 2 weeks I will release the tractor.