The City of Richmond is For Sale
No, not Richmond, California or Richmond, Virginia. The plane! The plane!
I can’t believe this beautiful piece of aviation history is still for sale! $2700/offers? Hell, I’m tempted to buy it myself to donate to the McClellan Aviation Museum here in Sacramento. Instead, I think I’ll try to get the McClellan folks together with the seller. This beautifully restored airplane needs a home where folks will appreciate it!
Regular contributer Dave gave me the heads up on this. Here are some of the particulars:
It’s a 1929 Ford 4-AT-E Tri-Motor restored to an extraordinarily high standard. In 1929 it was delivered as a new passenger plane to Mamer Flying Service in Spokane, Washington. It was later sold to K-T Flying Service of Honolulu and was at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Brought back to the mainland in 1946 by a private owner, it was leased by TWA for their 1949 20th anniversary celebration. It then went to an agricultural operator in Idaho and was modified as a sprayer and also as one of the pioneer forest fire fighting air tankers. Johnson Flying Service in Montana flew it for several years to drop Smoke Jumpers and supplies to fire fighters.
Since 1969 the plane has been privately owned and hangar stored by Dolph Overton and was part of his Wings and Wheels museum collection. It is currently owned by the Overton Family Trust, which was created by Mr. Overton to fund the plane’s restoration and facilitate its sale.
In November, 2005 the Tri-Motor was flown from Goldsboro, NC to Richmond, VA where (until recently) it was on public display at the Virginia Aviation Museum. It has also graced the cover of the March, 2006 issue of Trade-A-Plane. Currently hangared at Petersburg-Dinwiddie Airport in central Virginia, it is available for viewing and inspection by appointment only.
Here’s the link for all the details, more photos and to contact the seller direct. It’s a beautiful piece of aviation history. I’d love to see it find a new home.
Doug
This is interesting. I’d been checking the web listing for this plane daily for more than week to make certain it didn’t sell before my post. It had been listed at $3,000, then dropped to $2,700. I thought it was a steal and I guess it was!
Turns out the post generated a barrage of purchase inquiries about purchasing the $2,700 vintage aircraft. That caused the owners to check the listed price on their site and, what do you know, they had inadvertently left off the trailing three zeros! That’s right, they meant to say $2,700,000! Whoops!
So I guess I won’t be buying it, and neither will the folks at the McClellan Air Museum.
It proves the point, I guess, that when it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably a misprint.
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Got all excited when I saw this beauty and you said it was only $2700.00. Imagine my disappointment when it was actually $2,7 MILLION!
Guess I'll put the money back in the slush fund and just dream!
Thanks Michael,
You (and the owners) were quick to point out the error on their site. Good thing I didn't sell any of my Apple stock to make the purchase.
Doug
Gee, I was ready to pounce! I figured anything that can still fly is worth $2,700! But $2.7 Million? I can get a hellova jet for that!!
I'm sorry but why would anyone spend that kind of bucks on an "old" aircraft that lacks comfort, modern navigational gear, availability of parts, has high maintenance, is slow and so on?
I've heard of some embarrassing misprints, but this one seems major. How long did it go undetected?
What would have happened if someone would have handed him a cashier's check for $2700? If the original posting represented an offer and the check an acceptance, wouldn't it be a binding transaction? I think so.