325 picker with sheller (I forgot that model number, sorry) sold at a consignment sale for 1600 dollars. It looked fairly good on the outside but I did not check out the innards as the morning was bitter and blowing. I did not come to collect or I might have been tempted. I hope the price reflected the lack of demand locally versus the condition. I need to get up to speed on shellers.
A few years ago a 325 went for $4K here in southwest Iowa, with what looked like a 327 on the back end. $1600 sounds like a good price, even if it needed some work. Then again, we are half a country apart, so no telling how the prices correlate. 324/327s are pretty cheap and plentiful here, but a sheller back end would likely up the price. I have not seen many with shellers in SW Iowa, nor any with the grinder back ends. We have a sheller attachment for a NI mounted picker, but Grandpa bought it years ago for an unknown price. I keep meaning to see if it would fit onto one of our NI324s, but haven't got around to it yet.
One thing I need to take into acount is even though it "sold" for 1600 dollars it might have been the seller bidding it back. But that really does not change the value that much as any other party was not willing to go beyond 1500 dollars. The Mennonoites have gone past pickers and shellers here so that hurts the resale value. If this were the year 1990 I could see a handful of bidders in fierce competition for it. Nearly all the small farmers have a small combine such as a Deere 4400 or Gleaner F.
We combine most of our corn these days, but we still pick about 10 acres or so each year in the ear. We grind it to feed our 30-some-odd home-grown calves each year. We have no plans to change our feeding methods, so we will probably continue to pick ear corn (at least a little, anyway) for the foreseeable future. We have four of the 324/327 units, all in working or near-working condition. (By near-working, I mean only missing a paddle or drive chain here or there.) We paid a total of $1800 for the four units in western Iowa, which probably reflects that a) few folks pick in ear anymore, and b) even fewer plant wide-row corn. We pick narrow-row corn with those units by running the snoots about a foot off the ground. Kind of glad we no longer pick the whole farm by ear, then shell later. I have good memories of harvest and shelling times, but I also remember trying to keep that old sheller running. 10 acres a year is about right.
I guess it's different down in Pennsylvania. Wengers got in a 325 with the grinder on it a week ago Monday. $3800 was what they wanted and by Wednesday was paid for and off the lot. A 325 picker with 327 husker went last fall for $4200 just as fast. The 323s and 324s do sell, but they seem to sit a lot longer.
I think pull-behind pickers are still a good option for smaller producers or an operation like ours that does not need to pick much corn in the ear. The biggest advantage for us is that the pull-behind pickers do not come with one more motor to maintain, like a Uni system would. Those are available around our area, too, but we just don't need the added maintenance issues. We can pull a 324/327 with pretty much any tractor we own. We have fewer and fewer small producers in southwest Iowa, though, and the larger guys are just too busy to deal with ear corn. Everybody has to make their own business decisions, I guess. We still like the ground ear corn for cattle. I will say that picking ear corn has been a lot more fun the last few years since we "retired" the NI mounted picker and the old John Deere elevator. They were wore slap out. We spent waaayyy too much time working ON them instead of WITH them.
