Hello and welcome to my website!
My name is Martien van der Zanden.
Together with my wife Margot I live in a small town in Holland, in the country.
Some 25 years ago a dear friend of mine persuaded me to buy an old tractor.
It concerned a small Italian one, called "MOTOMECHANICA", on iron wheels, which I thought would be easy to fix.
But restoring it did take me about 10 years, so I decided this was not my kind of job.
In the mean time I bought my first porcelain tractor sign, however I had never seen one or heard of it before.
Margot liked it very much and that's when my tractor hobby made a turning-point.
Since I purchased my other tractors all restored I had time left to go out and search for other tractor signs.
And so we started travelling to Germany, Italy, France, Belgium and England and we really got into it deeper and deeper.
On the road I also picked up a big interest for old spark plugs.
On our trips we did not only find tin and porcelain signs from tractors.
We did also run into other very nice old agricultural advertising items like paper signs, folders, calenders, key-fobs, ash-trays and old plugs ofcourse.
Through the years my private collection has grown to a room full of tractor signs, a display full of old spark plugs and four old tractors.
You can have a look at them if you visit 'my collection'.
The past three years we visited some of the biggest tractor shows in the USA. We've met many nice and enthousiastic collectors with different fields of interest and we stay in touch with them on a regular bases.
If you are also interested in purchasing an original advertising item or an old spark plug I would like to invite you to visit 'what's available'.
All items displayed are absolutely genuine!
If you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to contact me.
Thank you for visiting and I wish you happy collecting.
