Some people get lucky... then there's the people that inherit a collection, add to it, and suddenly find themselves in business finding and selling old bikes

He has warehouses full of them, and is always adding more by having agents all over the USA snap up cheap bikes, send them his way, and he sells them by the cargo container load to European resale businesses

and he doesn't need a dealer's licence as the law in Iowa only requires that for things newer than 25 years old.

http://www.motorcycle-usa.com/2015/10/article/backmarker-finishing-mikes-collection/

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Luo Wenyou, the 1st Chinese man in international vintage rally driving, and collector of remarkable cars, is the owner and curator of the Beijing Vintage Car Museum

Thanks Doug!

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one of the most beautiful collections of motorcycles in France, Jean Luc Gaignard's

http://tcaplain.blogspot.fr/2011/10/jean-luc-gaignard.html

http://lesmotosmythologiques.blogspot.com/2016/03/v-behaviorurldefaultvmlo.html

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the only car collection in Guatemala I've ever heard of, and I doubt there are any others in central America to compare. The Mario Sueiras collection

http://mariosueiras.com/

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those wonderful people at Van Der Brink have scored another gold mine collection of cars (How the hell do they do that?) this time, a trucking company owner is auctioning off 700 cars (250 are Studes) he recently realized he will never get to restoring, nor making a museum

Hackenberger’s former trucking company used to deliver goods around the country and when the man himself was at the wheel, he’d always keep an eye open for interesting cars that he could haul back home with him.

Going to auction are a 23 window VW Bus, 2 BMW Isetta, a Crosley, and a Nash Metropolitan, a DeLorean, several Citroens including a DS, a Borgward, a Tatra, and a Darrin. Muscle cars include a ’65 Ford Mustang, a ’67 Plymouth Barracuda and a ’66 Dodge Charger. Tractors, motorcycles, etc are among the collection.

1947 Indian, 1949 Harley, tractors from IH to John Deere, 8 & 6 door Checker limos, Divco Milk Trucks, early Hondas, Jaguars, Porsche, Henry J’s, Desoto, Plymouth, and even COE Trucks

1st page of photos: http://www.vanderbrinkauctions.com/auctions_pictures.php?detail=205

Hackenberg and VanDerBrink Auctions will be hosting the sale over the weekend of July 15 and 16, including preview event on July 14, which will be attended by the owner himself. All vehicles on offer will be sold at no reserve, increasing the odds of scoring a project car at a bargain price.

http://www.automobilemag.com/news/barn-find-delorean-among-700-vehicle-collection-auctioned
http://www.vanderbrinkauctions.com/auctions_details.php

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Joe became bored quite quickly in retirement, so he started a service getting cars the max money at auction

He collected cars, and restored them, then auctioned them.

Bortz’s collection included six concept cars by 1988, and it was around this time when rumors began circulating of the four 1955 Motorama cars wasting away among the junkyard—the Cadillac Eldorado Brougham Town Car, the Chevrolet Biscayne, and two variants of the Cadillac LaSalle II.

Bortz bought them all and set out to restore them, and once news spread of the collector’s discovery and his passion for these dream cars, his phone began ringing with offers and leads for other concept cars that had escaped destruction. “I was just in the right place at the right time when these cars were beginning to be turned loose.”


Joe certainly has the kind of collection that stokes the flames of envy in other car enthusiasts- the Bonneville Special, the 1957 Chrysler Ghia Falcon, the 1953 Buick Wildcat I, the 1964 Pontiac Banshee, the 1956 Chrysler Plainsman station wagon, 1956 Cadillac Die Valkyrie, and can take them out for a spin.

Then he needed something to do, so he put his experience to work

Bortz acts as a concierge for car owners who are too busy or don’t feel educated enough to find the best venue to sell their car.

“The timing seemed to be right,” Bortz said. “I had retired six years ago and I had 50 years of buying and selling to only develop the Bortz Auto Collection. My hobby business has now evolved and we are assisting in the sale of collector cars for the single-car collector, an owner of a larger collection, the widow and children of collectors and also estate attorneys.”


For cars that do not sell on the internet, or for more high-end cars consigned to Take Your Car to Auction, Bortz progresses to a third approach.

“The third level is always to consider taking a car to a live auction. In reference to the latter, obviously many items have to be taken under consideration, such as the return on investment, considering the costs of doing the sale, what would be the best live auction to match up with the type of car that you have.”

Bortz said he uses his experience selling cars at live auctions to maximize the bidding action on that car.

“I know what to ask for at particular auctions, the best times to sell a car,” Bortz said. “I not only know how to pick a good auction, but their best auction for that car.”

https://www.facebook.com/tycta.carauction
https://bortzcars.wordpress.com
http://www.oldcarsweekly.com/news/editors-picks/collector-joe-bortz-puts-hobby-experience-to-work-for-others
http://robbreport.com/automobiles/what-concept/page/0/5
https://www.hemmings.com/magazine/hcc/2006/07/Joe-Bortz/1304063.html
http://carzhunt.blogspot.com/2016/08/macungieall-truck-nationals-and-aaca.html

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Looks like the Hudson Museum in Shipshewana Indiana, Eldon Hostetler's collection, may have closed since Halloween 2016, he passed away in Jan 2016

Eldon Hostetler surprised his community and his world when he left the Amish religion. The 1st of 13 kids, (and that is a lot of siblings) he had the natural gift to be an inventor and entrepreneur, and eventually stopped creating new stuff but only after  with more than 65 patents to his name,

He had a formal education until the 8th grade graduation (not unusual at the time) and switched from Amish to Mennonite.

His Grandpa had tractors and threshing machines, and he helped his grandfather renovate machinery. He was Amish, but he traded his steam engine in for a gasoline-fired tractor a 20-40 Huber tractor.

The tractor went three times as fast as the steam engine would go in high gear, and it pulled a wagon that he used to haul a 50-gallon drum with his fuel and oil and things on it, for hundreds of miles around the country doing threshing.

Hostetler said that when he was 18, he was helping his Grandpa Shrock in his shop one day when his grandpa told him if he promised never to tell his mother where I got the money, he would loan me $350 to buy my first car, a 1938 Hudson,”

Hostetler said. “I was the only person in our community who had a car, and so I hauled a lot of Amish people around. They paid me so much per mile and gave me gas ration stamps so I could buy gas. It was during World War II, and I couldn’t get tires. I had to recap those tires until I couldn’t recap them anymore.”

So he traded in the 1938 Hudson for a 1940 model with 27,000 miles, the second of many cars he owned in the coming decades.

In 2005 Eldon donated land, a building and endowment fund to start the Hostetler’s Hudson Auto Museum, building the largest collection of rare and unusual Hudsons.

http://millerstewartfuneralhome.com/OBITS/EldonHostetler.html
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g37526-d1422373-Reviews-Hostetler_s_Hudson_Auto_Museum-Shipshewana_Indiana.html
The Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/HostetlersHudsonMuseum/ stopped posting in 2010

https://www.hemmings.com/magazine/hcc/2006/12/Eldon-Hostetler/1382310.html

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a couple of cars from the full-size, big-block Chevy collection of Jody Schmeisser, one even is a less than 20k mile 427 SS Impala

http://www.oldcarsweekly.com/car-of-the-week/car-week-1966-chevrolet-impala-ss-427

and an unmolested L79 Nova with one repaint and only 87k miles, numbers matching.
http://www.yenko.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=307198&page=all

and a 1966 COPO Biscayne that started out as a cop car
http://www.yenko.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=421648

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hope for a loophole in the rules, then exploit it. But don't think you're going to just buy some property to make a private museum without the neighbors causing problems

When Peter Mullins wanted to make an underground garage for a dozen of his prize Bugatti and other exotic French classics below his bungalow house in West LA, he ran into zoning laws the were possibly meant to keep people from creating earthquake related problems for houses and insurance companies.

It seems the rule is that an underground garage can only be 1/4 the size of the building above it.

That's just not going to fit more than a couple cars. So... he got a really smart architect type person who knew of a simple little loophole. A garage known as a "private museum" has no size restrictions. Problem solved.

Other people had a lot more headaches with trying to make a place for their collection, like Peter Nettesheim in Long Island, who was balked by neighbors for 5 years when he tried to build a detached garage for BMW car and motorcycle restorations. A hobby that needs some garage space. He had bought a 2 acre lot with big trees that would give some privacy screening, but without 1st getting all his plans approved.

In one corner sits the oldest BMW motorcycle to date, a 1923 R2 with a confirmation from BMW hanging above it.

Take a moment to look at http://www.ride-ct.com/?p=9364 photos of the inside of the collection garage.

Most of his vintage bikes were obtained in Germany, a couple in Poland, but none in the USA. Many of his bikes are extremely valuable, worth into six figures apiece.

Nettesheim began restoring cars, but then reality hit: “After I was done with each car, I put so much time and effort into them I couldn’t sell them. What I realized was that I didn’t have enough garage space. So I started doing motorcycles; you can fit more inside the garage.”

By the mid-1990s, Nettesheim, whose day job is as the Freightliner dealer for Long Island, N.Y., had an architect draw up plans for a 32-by-48-foot two-story barn with two doors at one end. “It is the largest legal garage in town,” says Nettesheim. He has 53 motorcycles and four cars at his home, and he says that is only three-quarters of what he has.

http://www.garagestylemagazine.com/  Garage style magazine Fall 2010 issue
http://autoweek.com/article/new-yorkers-bmw-passion-fills-two-garages
http://www.motorcycleclassics.com/classic-german-motorcycles/classic-bmw-motorcycles-zmmz07jfzraw
http://www.limws.org/Thumbnail-folders/Nettesheim/index.html
http://tbrnewsmedia.com/museum-like-house-holds-huge-collection-of-bmw-motorcycles/

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a hot wheels collector

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