Like many others have posted, I have had several "best deals" but I have also had numerous " poor deals" over the years. The best deals have not just been the animals I purchased at very reasonable prices. Sometimes they have cost the most.
One of the high priced " best deals " I have been involved in was purchasing IDS Duke of Dublin while he was still in Ireland. This was in the early 80s, and one of my partners was in Ireland after attending the Royal Show at Coventry, England. I will always remember his phone call. He told me that he had found a Shorthorn bull in Ireland that may be the best Shorthorn bull he had ever seen. He said that there was a pretty big problem though, and that was that he had already been purchased by an American living in Texas. Neither of us had ever heard of this American who owned the bull, so I decided that I would try to find someone who may be able to provide me with a phone number. After a few calls to people I knew, I eventually ended up with a phone number. When I called him, I found out that USDA had just closed the border to imports of cattle from Ireland to the US. Canada had not done this yet, so I tried to see if I could get a price to buy the bull. He finally agreed he would sell the bull to us at $50,000, which was a big bunch of money almost 40 years ago. Over the next two days and nights and several phone conversations, we came to an agreement. We paid him $15,000 cash, as well as 3 cows that had been imported from Ireland for full possession and 50% of the semen rights. This could have been one of the worst deals we ever were in, but we decided we would try and promote Duke of Dublin by buying a display stall at Denver. He had only been here for about 6 months, and he had also been used fairly hard in our pastures, so he was a bit green when we took him to Denver. It was one of the best decisions we ever made as we sold almost $30,000 of semen in 5 days at the show and then sold another 2000 straws at $35/ straw over the next year, in the US as well as another 700 straws in Canada. The following year, we took Duke along with 12 of his first calves to Denver and displayed them right in front of the Exchange Building in the yards. We came home with 3 head and the 9 that sold from the display generated another $34,000. I can't remember how much semen we sold as well, but I remember we had two pages of semen orders in our visitors book at the show. One Colorado rancher purchased 300 straws and said he had always said when he found a Shorthorn bull he liked, he was going to breed his herd to him. Another rancher offered me his ranch as well as my choice of two women, in trade for Duke. I remember asking him how big the ranch was.
When I think back about that trip, I still shake my head when I think of the rancher who stopped by our stall and purchased 5 coming yearling bulls for $18,500 US. That was in 1985, and when I think of how many dollars this would be in todays $ valuation, it would be a pretty big amount. One year later, this same rancher phoned us and purchased another 4 Duke sons at $4000 each, sight unseen. We did not go to Denver that year so we found a ride for them and had them delivered right to his ranch south of Denver. We are still selling a bit of Duke semen today and I have not kept an accurate record of how much the total sales would be... but I am pretty sure this was a deal that worked for us!
