By CINDY LADAGE
Illinois Correspondent

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Roy Lee and Audrey Baker of Shipman, Ill., barely finished unloading their toys from the Gateway Mid-America Farm Toy Show in St. Louis, Mo., before loading up to travel to Louisville for this year’s National Farm Machinery Show (NFMS).
Roy Lee and Audrey are known throughout the farm toy-collecting hobby scene for their longevity and Roy Lee, for his ability to create toys that move.

The Bakers also have been hosting the Gateway show for 28 years, and going to the Louisville show almost since its beginning.
For Audrey, the shows are all about the people. “They are all so nice and so interesting. You become almost like family,” she said.
At this year’s Gateway show, father and son Niles and David Sharp, who sell toys, were also heading to the show, but planning to wear totally different hats once they arrived. David works for Buhler Manufacturing and will be in that booth.

“We make a line of versatile tractors, grain augers, grain cleaners, grain vacs and a line of compact implements,” he said. “We make rotary cutters, finish mowers, tillers and a line of rear blades.”
“I have been with the company for two years,” he said, and attending toy shows for the last 20. “The size of the (Louisville) show is amazing. Here, you can see about anything you want to see.”

Niles, who works at the Vicon Booth selling hay equipment, said the NFMS is, “one big time off a year, and it is a farmer’s party. If you want to see, it’s there.”

Another toy/tractor collector at the Gateway Mid-America Toy Show who made her way to Louisville is Sherry Schaffer. She collects Oliver tractors, toys and literature and is known to those who read antique tractor magazines as the editor of Oliver Heritage and the new magazine Heritage Iron.

Schaffer comes by her interest through her father; as a girl, she was a staple on the tractor-pulling circuit. She has been set up at the Louisville show for years and thinks of it almost as a family event.

“It is a chance to meet up with those I haven’t seen for a while,” she said.