Oliver garden tractor

jmohr

Member
I know of an Oliver lawn tractor that's tucked away in a shed. I know they are not common. I'm assuming they are fairly valuable? The owner said it was the smallest one made. Should I peruse this tractor. What's an approximate value. Thanks
 
Since you have no problem assuming, then I assume that you will not object to me assuming.

I assume that you are not a collector/restorer of old lawn and garden tractors since you know nothing about the Oliver line other than they are not common. If I am right, then I further assume that your only interest is to try and make a fast buck by buying it cheap and then flipping it for the highest dollar.

How am I doing? Is that what your motive is? If so, please take your money and speculate with nnalert or some other currency instead of depriving a true collector/restorer of the chance to add this tractor to his collection at a reasonable price?
 
You are way wrong. I am an avid Case collector, director for a steam and gas power threshing show, and a person that loves to preserve history. With that I know very little about Garden tractors and especially the Oliver brand. My grandfather owned an Oliver dealership in town for a short time after WW II. I know it's not the right era, but I would love to have an Oliver and this would fit on a trailer with a farm tractor when we go to shows. I'm also looking for something my boys can operate and display at a show. The owner is a distant neighbor and cousin that I don't want to take advantage of. Sorry to give the wrong impression. Can you give me more information? Thanks
 
You can look that up on the Tractor Data website.
They were only made one year, 1972, and were
made by Jacobsen.
 
'Collectable' garden tractor values have done nothing but fall for the last 20 years. Exactly what that old Oliver is worth is what it's worth to you. One man's junk is another man's treasure.

If you want it make a reasonable offer. Then dump $$$ into restoring it and take it to some shows. You'll enjoy showing it and people will enjoy looking at it. But don't expect it to be worth any more than what you paid for it originally.
 
Based on your above reply, I submit my apology.

Yes, the Oliver's are fairly rare but so are the White's and Minneapolis-Molines'. Jacobsen built tractors for all three companies as well as for Ford plus they put one out under their own name. The differences are MOSTLY cosmetic, such as the paint scheme , the grille and hood. Pricing depends a great deal on condition and how complete the tractor is. As already noted, first-class restored examples can see asking prices in the 5000 dollar range. Again, as noted..... pricing is very difficult to define because so few of them were made. Therefore, it comes down to how badly you want that particular tractor because everything is worth exactly what one person will pay for it. And if that tractor goes back up for sale a month later, it might only bring half what it did or it might bring 20 percent more.

The basic tractor is where the value is because many of the attachments found on the other four brands will work on the Olivers. I suggest that you join a site called Garden Tractor Talk and another one called My Tractor Forum, Some others are link_disallowed, tractorbynet.com and tractor forum.com and do searches for Oliver, Jacobsen, MM,, White and Fords that were built by Jacobsen. Personally, I think you will have a difficult time pinning down what is fair market value. I realize that you do not want to take advantage of the Seller but realistically speaking, it is up to him to decide what his tractor is worth and then test the market to see if anyone agree with him. Be careful. It is very easy to dump a lot of money into restoring an old GT but it is very difficult to recover that money when you try to sell it later on. Good luck.
 

Well maybe.......
I found pictures of both the pre '72 angle iron frame style and the '72 tube frame style. They were built by Jacobsen.
I have several of the Fords (both styles) made by Jacobsen.
The Fords are not particularly collectible because there were many more of them sold than even the Jacobsen labeled tractors.
They are great, sturdy little machines.
9045.jpg
9046.jpg
 
That top picture is not a true Oliver. They
were only made in the style of the lower
pic. Somebody has turned an earlier tractor
into an Oliver.
 

Yep, that's why I said "maybe".....it didn't look quite right to me either.
I just found another "made up" early Oliver tractor and discussion about it not being real.
 
That is one someone has made. The early Jakes were built as Fords and Minnie Moes, and Whites, but not as Olivers. The true Olivers were all built in
one year as variants of the GT series Jake ('73ish?) and sold for two years. Any early style Jake done as an Oliver is a fake, or "tribute", as people like to call fakes now.
 
Before making such an outrageous statement as that, you should do some research into the history of lawn and garden tractors.

Massey Ferguson never made a lawn or garden tractor but they certainly had other companies build them for them, such as Ingersoll. Allis Chalmers had their tractors built by Simplicity. One of the biggest companies in the
business of building re-branded tractors is MTD.

This practice goes on today, even with the larger tractors. Case no long makes any garden tractors, sub-CUT's or CUT's. John Deere, Ford, Massey also sub out the production of the smaller tractors. As often said.....if you
cannot beat them, then just join them. The costs involved with R&D, tooling, testing, warehousing parts for the small tractors is huge and American companies cannot compete against the products coming from India, Japan
and other Asian countries
 

It still ain't right, no matter who builds them and who's logo is slapped onto it.

The only good part of it is maybe spare parts are readily available via the company that actually built them.
 

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