See, Robby?
I haven't seen anything yet. OK?
Settle down. - Hey, how are you?
Hi. - Hey, how are you doing?
Hi, I'm John.
Hi, John.
We're pickers, so we're just out and about.
Rob, how are you doing? Nice to see you.
I met this lovely lady at the gas station.
And like, she said, you know, she talked about a Model T.
Followed me home.
Yes, so followed me home.
[laughter]
My name is Jim Stauffer.
I am from Clarkston, Michigan.
This is the things we're looking for.
We've got some of this stuff, yeah.
People have wanted to get on this property for years.
We buy this stuff, or we buy tools.
But we've been trying to keep most people away unless we're
ready to sell something.
My dad was a collector.
My wife calls him a hoarder.
And I don't want you to follow in his footsteps either.
[laughter]
Well, maybe we could help you out with that.
All right.
- Thank you so much. - Thank you.
Take lots and lots of stuff.
It was nice talking to you today.
It's very surprising to have a picker come here.
We'll take you to the other barn here where the Model T is.
What year T is this?
A 1924.
'24.
Oh, wow.
Dang.
And it runs?
The last time we took anybody for a ride in it
was when we had our funeral service for my dad,
and that was in 2012.
My dad was very much into trying to retain
as much original history as he could.
He was not into taking a piece of history
and making it go faster, making it do something
it was never intended to do.
When we built this Model T, he tried to keep
it as original as possible.
So, Jim, did your dad teach you how to drive this thing?
Oh, yeah.
By the time I turned 16, I actually had a--
I would pick up my girlfriends in this car.
Wow.
So you know how to drive it?
I did drive it, yeah.
These things aren't the easiest to drive.
Oh, they are not.
And actually, it's a lot more difficult than it used to be.
It needs a lot of repair.
Yeah.
He wanted to have four Model T's,
one for each one of his kids.
And this was his first one, and actually, was
the only one he got finished.
Oh, this is something you're looking--
you're keeping it. - Yeah, I definitely want--
- And this is family. - --to keep this.
This is family.
My dad built it.
My sisters would probably even shoot me if I
even considered selling it.
I understand why they want to keep it.
I mean, it's part of the family history.
Any picker worth his weight in salt
is always going to sniff out something to buy, especially
on a property like this.
Find anything, Jersey?
Some photos.
Oh.
What was this?
An old siren for fire.
- A siren? - Jersey likes sirens.
I like sirens.
I always run into sirens.
Guys had sirens for their motorcycles.
They had sirens for their cars.
They'd put a siren in the Model T.
That's a siren?
Yeah.
Let me look at this thing.
I couldn't get my brain wrapped around the size of this thing.
That thing is crazy.
So are these extra wheels to it?
No, no, Robbie, this is the--
this is the part that goes over here that makes the sound.
These are cast iron.
Watch.
So this is like a-- like a siren for like the community
to hear, like, hey, we've got something going on.
Lookit.
Right.
It goes on top of this all the way on.
Right.
And then you bolt it back on there.
On both sides.
That would go over the top.
Right, over the top.
And so this slices the air.
One rotates inside a stationary vein, and it creates a whistle.
And you have all these whistles around this circular drum,
and it creates the siren sound.
It's ear splitting.
It makes a high pitch whine-- wheeee!
Oh, yeah.
You know?
This is something you would put on a top of a building.
[siren blaring]
So loud that you don't want to be in front of it.
And look at the size of this motor.
What attracted me was the electric motor.
It was an early electric motor.
This might be like, from the '20s?
Yeah.
I mean, where did it come from?
My dad was on the volunteer fire department for Westerburg.
I remember as a kid riding with him.
He had a police band radio so he could know where the fires
were at, and we would take off.
The siren came off the Richland Township Fire Hall.
OK.
OK, local community siren.
Yeah.
They'd fire that thing up every day at noon.
- Well, your dad-- - Old timey.
--sounds like he was one of those guys
that wanted to save everything.
So they probably updated, and he's like,
don't throw that away.
Yeah, don't throw that one away.
I'll take that, boom.
Yeah, it's a limited scope who's going to want this thing.
I mean, I'm just weird enough to want
it to buy it to take a chance on it,
because I like the early electric stuff.
I like the fire engine aspect of a community siren.
I'm thinking about like $250.
I think we probably ought to get 400 out of it.
This could be you'd only get $50 for it in the scrap yard.
Yep.
I mean, I could see it bringing $400 retail,
but I got to make some money on this thing
because I got to haul it back to New Jersey.
Meet me halfway.
What's halfway?
- 300. - All right.
Thank you, sir.
I appreciate it.
I'm going to fire this thing up while Robbie's sleeping
tonight.
[siren blaring]
[chuckling]