I live in the rural upper midwest and this does happen from time to time. It happens very often on a very memorable piece of machinery, like the first tractor the guy every drove for example, where no one bids except the farmer who is holding the auction. The bank would not send a rep there to bid because everyone would know who it was and no one would bid against him, so he would be buying it from himself.
The Farmer's Holiday Association from the early 1930s did this quite a bit, and other things, too. I remember stories of farmers not getting paid what it cost to grow grain let it run out the back of their grain wagons, leaving a strip down their town's main drag.
Their credo - "Lets call a Farmer's Holiday, a Holiday let's hold. We'll eat our wheat and ham and eggs, And let them eat their gold"
I live in the rural upper midwest and this does happen from time to time. It happens very often on a very memorable piece of machinery, like the first tractor the guy every drove for example, where no one bids except the farmer who is holding the auction. The bank would not send a rep there to bid because everyone would know who it was and no one would bid against him, so he would be buying it from himself.
The Farmer's Holiday Association from the early 1930s did this quite a bit, and other things, too. I remember stories of farmers not getting paid what it cost to grow grain let it run out the back of their grain wagons, leaving a strip down their town's main drag.
Their credo - "Lets call a Farmer's Holiday, a Holiday let's hold. We'll eat our wheat and ham and eggs, And let them eat their gold"