w650gb500
New member
Greetings, my name is Dan and I'm a total newbie as far as tractors go. I now own one, but I've never even used one in the past, so I'm probably going to have numerous stupid questions in the near future.
The story is, that a friend of ours passed away from cancer and we have been trying to help his widow liquidate his estate. She called and asked if I could find out what his tractor might be worth with all of the attachments. She gave me a fairly detailed description of the machine and extras and I set out to scour the interwebs to get some values. While doing this, my fianc馥 said that we should go see the machine and make sure that the information that I was given was correct. We went to visit our friend and take a look at the tractor sitting in the garage. WOW!!! I never knew that Tony, the gentleman who had passed, was so particular about his equipment! The tractor was under a cover, on a battery tender, sitting on rubber mats in a heated garage. When I tell you that it could be sitting in our local JD dealership showroom, you would have to see it to believe its condition. I laughed at how all of the attachment were stored as well! On rollers for ease of movement with towels wrapped around every fitting just in case something might leak!!! It was crazy seeing everything like that. I took the cover off the 4300 to reveal a machine that has its wheels waxed, the cab waxed, the tires shined and so on.
I told her what I thought it might sell for and she agreed with that $$$ due to another friend who used to work for a JD dealership.
Fast forward 3 days and she calls me to say that someone had offered her $10k less than what we felt was a fair number. At that point, my fiancée told me to tell her that we were interested in it!!! Much to my surprise as I didn't think that we needed it even though it would be nice to have. She's usually the voice of reason and I'm the one that buys all of the dumb stuff, but not this time!!
Fast forward another 3 days and we are now the proud owners of a 2000 JD 4300 with a full Curtis hard cab, fan, 420 FEL, 3-point weight box, 72" belly mower, 59" front mount snowblower, 50" rotary mower, power beyond kit, JD yard cart and a pull behind seed spreader!!! Not only do I now have a bunch of cool new toys, but I lost 2 garage spaced which are now occupied by green and yellow "stuff"!
The weird thing is that I don't know if we really need this thing since we live in a development and only have 6 acres to deal with. It may be the most expensive yet under-used purchase we will ever make. I currently have a Husky 54" zero-turn mower, so the belly mower won't get used. My neighbor has a New Holland LS170 skidsteer that I use for most of my landscaping needs, so I guess we will give that a break and use the JD for rock, mulch and modified now.
I really would like to ad a backhoe to the 4300 as I think I would get more use out of that than anything else.
Anyway, here's a few pix of the new set-up and even though its 17 years old, its one clean & good looking rig.
The story is, that a friend of ours passed away from cancer and we have been trying to help his widow liquidate his estate. She called and asked if I could find out what his tractor might be worth with all of the attachments. She gave me a fairly detailed description of the machine and extras and I set out to scour the interwebs to get some values. While doing this, my fianc馥 said that we should go see the machine and make sure that the information that I was given was correct. We went to visit our friend and take a look at the tractor sitting in the garage. WOW!!! I never knew that Tony, the gentleman who had passed, was so particular about his equipment! The tractor was under a cover, on a battery tender, sitting on rubber mats in a heated garage. When I tell you that it could be sitting in our local JD dealership showroom, you would have to see it to believe its condition. I laughed at how all of the attachment were stored as well! On rollers for ease of movement with towels wrapped around every fitting just in case something might leak!!! It was crazy seeing everything like that. I took the cover off the 4300 to reveal a machine that has its wheels waxed, the cab waxed, the tires shined and so on.
I told her what I thought it might sell for and she agreed with that $$$ due to another friend who used to work for a JD dealership.
Fast forward 3 days and she calls me to say that someone had offered her $10k less than what we felt was a fair number. At that point, my fiancée told me to tell her that we were interested in it!!! Much to my surprise as I didn't think that we needed it even though it would be nice to have. She's usually the voice of reason and I'm the one that buys all of the dumb stuff, but not this time!!
Fast forward another 3 days and we are now the proud owners of a 2000 JD 4300 with a full Curtis hard cab, fan, 420 FEL, 3-point weight box, 72" belly mower, 59" front mount snowblower, 50" rotary mower, power beyond kit, JD yard cart and a pull behind seed spreader!!! Not only do I now have a bunch of cool new toys, but I lost 2 garage spaced which are now occupied by green and yellow "stuff"!
The weird thing is that I don't know if we really need this thing since we live in a development and only have 6 acres to deal with. It may be the most expensive yet under-used purchase we will ever make. I currently have a Husky 54" zero-turn mower, so the belly mower won't get used. My neighbor has a New Holland LS170 skidsteer that I use for most of my landscaping needs, so I guess we will give that a break and use the JD for rock, mulch and modified now.
I really would like to ad a backhoe to the 4300 as I think I would get more use out of that than anything else.
Anyway, here's a few pix of the new set-up and even though its 17 years old, its one clean & good looking rig.
Congrats and if you need any help, there are a lot of JD owners here.
