We’ll never know exactly what Edwin “Alan” Rietz’s was thinking as he hoarded nearly 100 vintage cars and trucks over a 45-year period, but there are clues. A look through his collection reveals a dozen or so collectible Mopars—mostly 1970 models—but the majority are what you might call “everyman” cars—stuff like Dusters and D100s. Rietz’s favorite machinery was produced by the Chrysler Corporation—Dodges especially—but there are a smattering of C4 Corvettes and Cadillacs on Rietz’s 1,100-acre farm. There are no Fords in sight, which is puzzling, but according to relatives, Rietz did own a 1948 Ford in high school—his only known blue oval. Alan Rietz passed away September 30, 2017, taking that secret with him.
Rietz’s barn find came to our attention by way of the VanDerBrink Auctions website [vanderbrinkauctions.com]. Unlike auction houses such as Barrett-Jackson, Mecum, or Russo and Steele, VanDerBrink auctions are typically family-friendly events held on location. There are no sexy models, VIP tents, flattering stage lights, or alcohol-fueled bidding wars, just straightforward auctioneering put on by company founder, Yvette VanDerBrink. The auction house was started by Yvette in 2001 when she saw that old cars in salvage yards were being crushed or shredded for their scrap value. As a self-described “car chick,” she convinced a few scrapyard owners to let her auction off their old car inventory instead of scrap them. When word spread that Yvette was fetching more than three times scrap value, her auction business exploded. These days, Yvette holds 15 to 23 auctions per year between April and November, many of them estate sales of hoards similar to Alan’s. “It’s more of a county fair atmosphere with music and giveaways, t-shirts, and decorations,” says Yvette. “It’s a celebration of the collection. We want to make it a car-lover’s Woodstock.”
On June 9, 2018, the Rietz collection will be offered for sale not on the stage of a Vegas hotel, but on a soybean farm in Mansfield, South Dakota. By then, the deep snow drifts and biting cold of our March visit will be replaced by the smell of fresh cut grass, fireworks, and burgers sizzling on the grill. Right now, however, Alan Rietz’s widow, Linda, sits across from me at her farmhouse kitchen table. It’s over five months since her husband’s passing, and it’s obvious she hasn’t gotten over his sudden death. She’s quick to laugh, but you can tell the pain is just under the surface. You feel her ocean of emptiness, yet she’s still eager to talk about Alan, referring to him in present tense. “He likes HOT ROD,” she says, laughing while fighting back tears, motioning to the magazine at the bottom of a stack of mail.
Born just nine days apart in 1952, Linda and Alan were acquaintances in high school, but weren’t close friends. “Alan was in the jock group and I was in the nerd group. We sat at opposite ends of the cafeteria,” Linda says with a laugh. The year was 1970, and Central High School in nearby Aberdeen, SD was just across the street from Martyn-Edwards Dodge. On the front line was a nearly new low-mileage 1970 Challenger SE with a 383 and a TorqueFlite. In case you’re wondering, it’s the Go Mango orange one in this story. Alan couldn’t afford it, but he knew he wanted it, so he kept track of the car’s whereabouts, eventually buying it from the second owner in 1976.
By the time Alan and Linda became re-introduced through friends years later, Alan’s lone Challenger had grown into a small collection. “By the time I met him in 1980, he probably had twenty cars in his lot. He had a Chevelle, but they were mostly Mopars,” says Linda. Today, someone with 20 classic Mopars and a private lot to put them on at the age of 28 sounds like the description of a playboy millionaire, but that simply wasn’t the case. The Rietz farm had been passed down through the generations, and Alan—ever the good grandson—had worked on it his whole life. It was hard, punishing labor, but Alan had a knack for it. The farm eventually became his, and the seasonal rhythm of planting, growing, and harvesting provided predictable gaps in the back-breaking schedule, giving Alan the precious time to indulge his one passion: cars. “He’d get done with his work or take a break and go to the swap meet,” says Linda. “He could spot a car lot in somebody’s backyard. He’d hit the brakes, back up, and go down that lane and ask ‘can I look at those cars?’”
We lean into the freezing wind and trudge through the snow to the larger of two barns. We see familiar grilles and sheetmetal poking through piles of white, but we also notice significant pieces of farm equipment outside, some of it almost new. That’s odd, we think. Shouldn’t that be inside? We’re not even in the barn yet, and it dawns on us that Alan is fanatical in his love for Mopars—enough that his farm equipment sits outside.
What we came to discover is that Alan’s hoard is divided into three distinct categories that correspond roughly to three different life periods. The most valuable and complete cars were gathered first, between 1971 and 1980—in the pre-Linda era. The Go Mango 1970 Challenger SE, a matching 1970 ’Cuda, a 1970 big-block Road Runner convertible with a four-speed, and a 1970 440 six-pack, four-speed Super Bee are some from that time. When Alan bought them, cars like this were too fuel-thirsty and could be had for close to scrap value. When muscle cars ticked up in the ’80s and priced him out of the market, Alan switched to parts. “When I first met him, he was gung ho on collecting parts,” says Linda. “He would go to Shakopee Raceway Park, Rapid City, Sioux Falls, or Duluth. Most of them came from driving around to the swap meet.”
We stamp the snow off our boots and quickly shut the barn door. My eyes adjust to the unnatural orange glow of the sodium-vapor lights buzzing overhead. Cars, parts, engine blocks, and boxes are packed and stacked everywhere. The smell of damp earth, oil, and old rubber envelop us in an intoxicating cloud. This is not the museum collection of a tech millionaire with a checkbook and a gold fountain pen, but the open diary of a farmer who digs a wad of five-dollar bills out of his overalls while cracking a joke with another farmer.
I try my best to snake through the path that meanders through the trove. My progress is impeded not by the tight space, but by the myriad of cool objects that stop me in my tracks. Cylinder heads, intake manifolds, crankshafts, rows of blocks, wheels, radiators, rearends, you name it—it’s all grouped with a fair amount of intuition, like a real car guy would do it. To the untrained eye, however, it’s an impossible jumble. We are now inside Alan’s universe, where no doubt the exact position of every object was known to him. Alan isn’t here, but we feel him.
“In the ’90s, parts got harder and harder to find. He had most of the complete cars before I met him,” says Linda. And what about the 60 or 70 cars outside in the field? It turns out, this was the third and final phase of Alan’s collecting binge. When parts too became rare, Alan pivoted to rescuing cars that most would deem scrap. Linda: “Anything that was mentioned to go to the shredder or the crusher or to the demolition derby, he would buy them so they wouldn’t go there.”
Unlike suburbanite collectors, Alan had vast room for storage on the 1,100-acre farm, and he worked hard to organize the hulks to his liking. Dodges and Plymouths are lined up like soldiers, sorted by year, make, and model. Some of special interest—an old race car or an A100 pickup—are displayed whimsically in a position of prominence. While these cars aren’t as complete or in as good a condition as the barn cars, they provided us with hours of fanciful, immersive discovery.
“He would come home with a carcass on a trailer, and park it right on the front yard so that everybody would drive by and look at it,” jokes Linda. “On my part of the mowing, from the buildings to the road, I would always have to mow around it for a few times before he would put the car in the lot or in the shop.”
In spite of the huge hoard, few of Alan’s cars are turnkey drivable. While some of them were at one time or were fixed just for fun to get them running, Alan was most satisfied by the hunt and the acquisition than the restoration. “He didn’t buy them with the intention of fixing them up,” says Linda, “but one of his friends might need a bumper, fender, or a hood. He would do a lot of trading. He was bigger on trading than selling.”
We move to the back of the barn where the concrete floor changes to dirt covered with sawdust. We find a ’70 Super Bee, a ’70 Road Runner convertible, and a ’69 Road Runner, but there’s also a quartet of 1980 Chrysler Imperials and a pair of Cadillacs that seem out of place. We ask Linda about them: “Those were the kind of cars his grandpa drove.” I nod with understanding as thoughts of my own granddad come flooding back. Childhood memories are a potent motivator.
As we interview Linda and capture photos and video of Alan’s immense collection, Yvette VanDerBrink is there too. She’s digging deep into the barn, cataloging cars and grouping parts in her notebook. Yvette has a mountain of planning to do in the next three months to inventory, describe, sequence, and stage pieces for the auction. She is also there—intentionally or not—for emotional support. Her client isn’t a business or a dealership, but a grieving widow. Yvette VanDerBrink’s experience as an auto enthusiast, wife, farmer, auctioneer, and racecar driver make her uniquely qualified for estate sales like Linda’s. We’re guessing that Yvette’s empathy and tact in these situations is just what the doctor ordered. At any rate, Linda seems grateful to have her there.
For all of Linda’s grief over the loss of her husband, there is a silver lining. By having the presence of mind to contact Yvette VanDerBrink, hundreds of enthusiasts of more modest means will have the opportunity to own one of Alan’s 96 cars. Remarkably, Linda and Yvette have found the titles to all but 12 of them. And while a handful of them are indeed valuable collector cars with what we expect will be steep bids, most will be within reach as either project cars or relatively complete parts cars. Likewise, the collection of parts features some rare finds such as vintage Hemi engines, but most of it is period-correct speed equipment, engine cores, and body parts.
Collections like Alan’s prove that there still are plenty of starter project vehicles out there being saved from destruction. Yvette VanDerBrink has proven that her unique approach to car auctions can bring those cars to regular guys without the steep price of over-restoration and speculative investment. But perhaps most important for Alan’s auction, an experienced helping hand can bring a degree of closure and comfort to Linda Rietz. We hope that come June, there are 96 people out there who will think about Alan and Linda as they lay hands for the first time on their future pride and joy.
Take Five With Yvette VanDerBrink
It might not have the same swagger as “Sothebys,” but VanDerBrink Auctions has a solid reputation in the Midwest for providing a range auction services to car collections such as Alan Rietz’s. In fact, during 2018, VanDerBrink will be hosting other auctions in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, and Michigan. (To see what’s on the auction block for these—plus the Alan Rietz collection—you can check out the inventory at www.VanDerBrinkAuctions.com.) Based out of Hardwick, MN, VanDerBrink Auctions is the sole invention of Yvette VanDerBrink, and was established in 2001. It provided a way for Yvette to make some extra money and play with her favorite things at the same time: cars, parts, antique tractors, and memorabilia. We sat down with her to find out how her auctions work, and how folks can get involved in the bidding process. Here are highlights of what she had to say.
HRM: How does somebody get involved as a bidder?
YV: They’ll want to go to the website and look at the inventory first, to see what they want to bid for. They need to check the payment requirements—cash, check with proof of funds, and credit card. People also ask a lot about transportation. They need to arrange their own transportation. They have ten days for removal. They will have a receipt that shows they have paid in full. They’ll bring it with them. We’ll be doing the auction live online simulcast, so an online bidder will have an invoice that they’ll need to bring with them. They will have to give that information to the trucking company. We will also have it on our end too.
HRM: How did you get involved with the vintage car auction business?
YV: I’m a car chick. I started this business on my own, from scratch. My father was a farmer who started a salvage yard. I started out selling old-car salvage yards. I didn’t want guys to crush them because these old parts are so hard to find. The iron prices were real high at the time, in 2001 to 2006. We’d do the auction and let the collectors get their parts and their cars, and we would let them strip the cars if they bought ’em. They could leave the hulks and then the crusher came in after the collectors were done. So it was the circle of life of a car. We were getting the sellers more money from the collection than from the crusher. It was like three and a half times more money than if crushed.
People saw what we were doing out of our area. It gave the old girls a chance for a new life. I’m a collector also, and so I didn’t want to see all those valuable parts and cars killed by the crusher.
HRM: What influenced you to become a self-described “car chick”?
YV: My dad was a collector, so I grew up around racecars and cars all my life. My dad bought Chevys and he would pack them away. His thing was ’57 Chevys. He was an official for the Street Stock class at the racetracks in the area. We were at the races Friday, Saturday, and Sunday all my life. I’ve raced enduros—200 laps non-stop. I was the first woman in the United States to finish an endure race. They don’t do too many of those anymore. They were too dangerous I guess.
HRM: How do people know what they’re getting when they bid at your auctions?
YV: I take a lot of pictures and write descriptions as I see what’s in front of me. I try to describe it to the buyers as best as possible. So for example, I’ll tell them where rust is where I see it, what maybe is missing, what options it has, what am I seeing. They can also contact me if they want a personal inspection, but that availability is limited. Otherwise, we set up a preview before the auction one or two days beforehand. They can register on-site or they can early register through email or mail. There is no charge for a bidder’s number.
HRM: How does the auction work?
YV: We let people actually open doors and look inside, but you can’t put a wrench to it. No test drives! The morning of the auction, everybody’s ready. We start promptly at 9 am. We always sell the best stuff first, and then go down the line from there. The reason why we do that is that people will otherwise hold their money, because everybody thinks they can take the prom queen to the dance, but only one person is the winner.
We always sell the cars first then the parts afterwards, so they can go shopping for their parts. A lot of guys if they’re just looking for parts, they know it’s going to be after the cars. Or if somebody just comes for the Super Bee, they don’t have to wait all day. It will be sold towards the beginning. Get the momentum going right off the bat. Logic doesn’t make sense to hold all the good stuff to the end.
I am going to sell all the Chargers together, all the ’Cudas together, the Road Runners together, the Super Bees. The red 1970 Challenger is the first one going.
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