Automotive

Alta. car collector loses $3M collection to fire

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  • Mar 12th, 2017 6:17 pm
Deal Guru
Oct 6, 2007
11213 posts
10058 upvotes
Kootenays

Alta. car collector loses $3M collection to fire

An Alberta car collector is devastated after he lost more than an estimated $3 million worth of uninsured antique cars and trucks in a fire on Thursday afternoon. Curtiss, who lives just outside of Olds, Alta., says the barn contained more than 40 classic cars and another 40 antique tractors. Also lost in the fire were two bailers and various pieces of farming equipment including a back hoe, a skid steer and multiple quads. Curtiss said neither the dairy barn nor any of its contents were insured. http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/i-ve-lost- ... -1.3321597

I cannot imagine having a collection this size and not having it insured. I feel for the guy, but sheesh.
5 replies
Deal Addict
Nov 4, 2004
1950 posts
1549 upvotes
I think the value is likely overstated by a gigantic margin.

For example his claim of spending hundreds of thousands of hours on his collection is absurd.

Let's say he did work 200,000 hours over that 45 years of collecting. (the minimum to qualify for the plural term of hundreds of thousands). Well divide that on a per day basis and he'd have to been working on those cars for 12 hours per day EVERY single day of those 45 years. If he's really a dairy farmer there's zero chance he has that much free time.

Not to say that it's not a terrible situation for him as he didn't have insurance coverage. But he's overstating his loss.
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Deal Guru
Oct 6, 2007
11213 posts
10058 upvotes
Kootenays
Yeah, we laughed at the hours when we saw the news report last night, too. Even 100,000 hours is 50 years of 8 hours a day, 5 days a week with 2 weeks off per year. He may have had help working on them, though.
Deal Fanatic
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Apr 15, 2011
5834 posts
1219 upvotes
aGincourt
Highly doubt it was worth $3 million because a $3 million collection wouldn't be sitting in a flammable barn. Looks like it was a bunch of old rusty chassis' that was just rotting for the past century
Deal Guru
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Sep 8, 2007
10978 posts
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Way Out of GTA
Nothing about this story makes any sense. So he has cars worth $80k a piece or whatever the math is but no insurance? Keeping them in some dirty old barn? The hours he's put into it in the hundreds of thousands?

I call shenanigans.
Deal Guru
Apr 11, 2006
12388 posts
6570 upvotes
Vaughan
Maybe he simply meant hundreds to thousands of hours, but didn't actually realize the phrase "hundreds of thousands" meant something else.

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