Tim Wertish started buying and selling cars in high school, the son of a Redwood Falls, Minnesota dealer who inherited the itch. Twenty-five years later, he’s sitting on more than 300 vehicles lined up in rows across a plot of land he’s now selling. VanDerBrink Auctions will spend two days, September 25 and 26, trying to move it all.
The collection leans heavily toward trucks. Around 100 Ford pickups. Roughly 100 more from General Motors. Cab-over-engine rigs, fire trucks, grain haulers from International and Diamond T. The cars are fewer but not without teeth: a Hemi-powered 1966 Dodge Charger, a 1967 Plymouth GTX, a scattering of Camaros and Impalas.
Wertish’s stated philosophy was to keep the patina, drop in an LS, slam it, and bag it. He got a few done over the years. Most of them, though, just sat there.
That’s the uncomfortable math of hoarding on this scale. The desire to save old iron almost always outruns the time and money to actually restore it. Wertish bought a whole parcel of land to store his finds, organized them by year, make, and model, and then let Minnesota winters do their slow, corrosive work. These are not concours-ready machines. They are project cars, parts donors, and daydreams in sheet metal.
Which is exactly what makes the auction interesting to a certain kind of buyer. How often do you get to walk down a row of 100 GM pickups, compare cab corners and frame rails, and cherry-pick the best starting point? The COE trucks even come with an option to buy just the cab, skip the frame, and mount it on something modern. That is where the real money play lives for builders who know what they are doing.
The two-day format tells you something about the sheer volume. VanDerBrink has handled hoard dispersals before, and even by their standards, 300-plus lots across cars, trucks, and heavy equipment is a serious undertaking. Expect a crowd of pickers, a handful of serious restorers, and the usual contingent of guys who swear they will get to it next summer.
The reality is that most of these vehicles have been slowly returning to the earth for a quarter century. Rust does not negotiate. But buried in those rows, there are likely a dozen or more trucks and cars worth saving, pieces that would cost twice as much if they surfaced one at a time on Bring a Trailer or Facebook Marketplace. The value here is density and choice.
Wertish is letting go of the land, and with it, the collection that defined decades of his life. It is a story that repeats itself across rural America, in barns and fields and fenced lots behind small-town dealerships. Somebody starts saving, nobody can stop, and eventually the pile outlives the plan.
The bidding starts September 25 in Redwood Falls. The catalog is still being finalized, and VanDerBrink has not yet published a full lot list. For a collection this size, expect surprises buried in the back rows that even the auctioneer has not fully cataloged yet.
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