Combines and toys a great combination for Dyersville man

Loyd Jasper never thought he'd grow up to play with toys.

Then again, Loyd was born in Dyersville, home of the world-famous Ertl Toy Co. and he's a retired farmer. It's a combination that has led to an infatuation with building toy farm combines.

“I just love doin' it,” says Loyd, 69, who spends at least 40 hours a week at his hobby. “All I want out of it is to pay my expenses and to go to toy shows.”

He does it because he can sell his one-of-a-kind, custom-built toys for hundreds of dollars each.

A 1930s pull-behind peanut combine featured on the cover of last November's “Toy Farmer” magazine sold for $1,500 at auction at the National Toy Show in Dyersville. It's now in a Nebraska museum.

“It surprised me,” Loyd says. “If I want another one, I can build another one.”

But first he'll finish a newer self-propelled peanut combine that he's already sold for $1,000. Then he'll continue building more conventional models of corn and grain combines seen in Midwestern farm fields.

As a teen, Loyd drove machinery on the farm, picked corn by hand, fixed what needed to be fixed. He began working full time after 8th grade, first farming for his father and others, then at Tegeler's Body Shop, then farming for himself, then operating a feed store, then managing a convenience store … for a time he led tours at Ertl but didn't get enough hours.

In 1989 Loyd began collecting farm toys, as do many farmers, searching for replicas of machines he had used. (He has more than a hundred farm toys in a display case built into a dining room wall.) He became frustrated when he couldn't find a John Deere 4400 combine with a four-row corn head.

“Now,” a toy dealer said, “you can't buy one of them. Take a 6600 and change the number and buy an 8-row head and cut it down …”

“That's not possible,” said a man who overhead the conversation.

That's all it took.

From that first challenge, Loyd has been meeting them head on in either his basement or garage workshops.

He'll buy similar scale models, slice and modify parts, then put them together with J-B Weld (a bonding agent) to create the requested combine.

He'll build from scratch if necessary.

He'll use aluminum, copper, brass, steel, even galvanized steel.

He'll use pictures - in one case, photos a farmer had taken of his old combine with a tree growing up through it - or take measurements of the real thing for accuracy.

Patience is his virtue, from meticulously hiding the seams to applying five or six coats of paint.

When he's done, Carol, his wife since 1964, applies a “made by” sticker.

“Everything I build is something that no toy manufacturer has made,” Loyd says.

And every one, from Iowa to Ohio to France, is a custom combine dear to the new owner.