A Cardboard Magnate Spent Decades Overpaying For Cars To Help People In Need, Now He’s Selling All 1,300 Of Them

Most car enthusiasts consider themselves lucky if they get the chance to own their dream car just once. Some of us, like me, consider ourselves extraordinarily blessed to have 15 of our favorite cars. Rarer than that is when someone owns hundreds of cars or more. One businessman in rural Alabama might have the largest car collection in America. Cardboard magnate Greg Rusk is said to own up to 1,300 cars, and at least half of them were purchased for way too much money to help local families in need. Now, in a massive multi-part auction, Rusk is selling his collection off in a no-reserve auction so all sorts of enthusiasts can enjoy his decades of finds.

Mass collectors can be a bit controversial in the car enthusiast world. Many folks believe that cars are meant to be driven, and even someone with just a dozen cars can’t drive them all like they should. I’m guilty of this, as most of my cars rarely drive more than 500 miles in a year, if that. Then you have folks who have even more cars than I, like Derek Bieri from Vice Grip Garage or Greg Rusk here, whose cars can sit for years, getting flat tires, varnished fuel, and inches of dust. Mr. Rusk is giving enthusiasts the chance to put his cars back on the road.

The first batch of Rusk’s cars, well more than 200 vehicles, will be sold in October in an auction that Hagerty Marketplace is calling the Generous Collection. Approximately 150 of these cars are for sale right this moment in auctions, with roughly another 50 posted by Tuesday. The variety in Rusk’s collection is impressive, and includes everything from old conversion vans to Mazda RX-8s, pickup trucks, and even plenty of German cars. Many of these cars have covered tons of miles, yet look fantastic. Some are projects, and some are garage queens. Rusk was not a typical rich guy car collector, which means that there’s something for everyone here.

But this begs the question. How does one guy end up with over a thousand cars in the most random car collection in America? Rusk has a pretty fascinating explanation.

From Cadillacs To Everything Else

Greg Rusk is currently the owner of Rusken Packaging, Inc., a cardboard packaging juggernaut headquartered in Cullman, Alabama. The company was founded in 1974 by Bobby Rusk and operated in a 6,000 square-foot facility. Ownership of the business transferred to Bobby’s son, Greg, in 1992, after Bobby passed.

Since Greg took control of the family business, he’s grown it into a titan that’s considered to be the pre-eminent independent supplier of corrugated packaging in the Southeast United States. Rusken Packaging has spread its wings across 19 facilities in 10 states and offers everything from standardized boxes to entirely custom printing, design, and packaging solutions. There’s a pretty good chance that if you live in the Southeast and purchased some sort of boxed product, that box came from Rusken.

Running the family empire has afforded Rusk a pretty heavy wallet, which has allowed him to follow his dreams.

A couple of days ago, Hagerty published its latest episode of Barn Find Hunter (embedded above), which opens with this line: “259 Chevys, 109 Fords, 105 Cadillacs, 96 Pontiacs, 55 Mopars, 48 Lincolns, 35 Buicks, 24 Oldsmobiles, and 12 Volkswagen Beetles.” The show’s host, Tom Cotter, joined Greg Rusk on a walkthrough of only a fraction of Rusk’s collection, and got the scoop as to how in the world one man even ends up with over a thousand cars.

Rusk says that his collecting journey started 26 or 28 years ago. At first, he just wanted to collect a Cadillac from every year of the company’s history. He had this idea of possibly opening a museum, and spent his weekends in the early Internet era by going out, looking at cars, and bringing them home.

Rusk explains that, when he was younger, his friends were all into muscle cars. However, he just loved the elegance and ride of a Cadillac. So, old Cadillacs became his dream cars.

It wasn’t long before Rusk’s interests in cars branched out from Cadillacs. Soon enough, he began collecting Chevrolet Chevelles, Pontiac Firebird Trans Ams, Chevrolet Corvettes, and basically everything else. Rusk even has at least one Nash Metropolitan and a Mazda RX-7 with an LS swap.

In talking to Cotter, Rusk says that what would happen was that he’d get into collecting spells and just amass tons of cars. Apparently, Rusk would drive these cars for a weekend or two and then just stash them away in one of his many buildings or outside on his properties. So, a lot of the cars in this auction were last driven a decade or longer ago for just a single weekend.

The Hagerty crew estimates that there are between 800 to 1,300 cars here, but the true number is unknown. Rusk apparently has a paper-based inventory of the cars that’s more than an inch thick, but he doesn’t even know how many cars he has or how many buildings they’re all stored in. Rusk also doesn’t remember what the first car he collected was, but he says that his favorite is a 1959 Cadillac convertible.

As for how he chooses these cars? He just likes it when a car is cool or unique. He doesn’t care if the car is numbers-matching or even if it’s in good condition. If it were a neat car, he wanted it.

Doing Some Good

I think the really cool part of Rusk’s story is just how he collected these cars. Apparently, word started getting around that Rusk likes cars, and soon enough, members of the community and employees of Rusken Packaging started reaching out. These people often say that they want to sell their car to buy a house, or need to sell their car to pay for a medical bill.

Instead of bartering these people down, like people on Facebook would, Rusk would do the exact opposite. He’d ask the person how much money they actually wanted, and that’s the price he paid for the car. Rusk estimates that about half of his collection came from surrounding communities in Alabama. Hagerty says that Rusk “would regularly pay overly generous fees to acquire an interesting vehicle.” That suggests he’s almost certainly paid way more for these cars than they were even worth.

This is why Hagerty calls this auction the Generous Collection. Basically, Rusk used his love for cars to do some good in Alabama.

The Generous Collection

Alright, so you know Rusk’s story and why the man somehow ended up with a thousand-plus cars. What goodies are in this auction?

Before I continue, I will reiterate a point I said earlier. Rusk’s only standard for collecting a car was that it was unique and cool, or that someone in need was selling it. He didn’t really care about its history, its condition, or modifications. Lots of his cars are not minty, and many of them have tons of miles. Many of them really are like the kinds of cars that you’ll find on Facebook.

I dig that, because that should mean that regular people should be able to afford the cars in this auction. But it also means that you should look past the pretty paint to make sure there aren’t any issues that would be a dealbreaker for you.

The first car that caught my eye was this 1992 Cadillac Sedan DeVille Custom Funeral Flower Car.

I love flower cars. These cars tend to be luxury vehicles converted into a giant platform to carry flowers or a platform to carry a casket on a bed of flowers. They add style and dignity to a funeral procession, but as cars, they’re just plain cool. I mean, this thing is basically a Sedan DeVille pickup truck!

The other vehicle that immediately got my attention was this 1967 King Midget Model III. This car is being sold as a project because the auction team was not able to get it started.

Now, I’m just going to rapid-fire off some of the awesome vehicles from the auction:

1997 Chevrolet Camaro Z28 30th Anniversary Coupe

1953 Jaguar XK120 Roadster

1999 Chevrolet S-10 Xtreme 5-Speed

LS1-Powered 1989 Mazda RX-7 Turbo II 6-Speed

1981 AMC Spirit GT Liftback 4.2L

1987 Alfa Romeo Spider Quadrifoglio

2002 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS Intimidator

1995 Toyota Celica ST Coupe

1949 Cadillac Series 62

1973 Cadillac Eldorado Convertible

1967 Oldsmobile Toronado

1986 Chevrolet C10 Silverado

I think what’s really awesome is that, sure, my highlights here are some interesting cars, but there are also lots of just regular, everyday cars in this auction. There’s a 2001 Audi TT in the auction with 239,000 miles and an underbody of three different colors. There’s also a 2007 Mitsubishi Eclipse, a 2011 GMC Yukon XL Denali, a 2002 Ford F-150 Lariat, and some other cars that some folks might consider to be “regular traffic.” That’s great!

This is why I’m saying that this auction has something for everyone. A little bit of everything is in here, from cheap project cars and high-mileage daily drivers to high-dollar Mustangs and Porsches. Also, stay tuned for future auctions, as this is only a fraction of Rusk’s collection.

If you’re interested in checking out the auction, head on over to Hagerty’s the Generous Collection. As I said before, most of these cars have between 11 and 13 days left in their auctions, so you have plenty of time to explain things to your significant other.

As for Greg Rusk, he tells Hagerty that this is the end of his obsession. He’s spent nearly 30 years amassing what could be America’s largest car collection, but now, he wants to see these cars go and have fun with other people. It looks like quite a lot of folks are about to get that chance.

What looks interesting to you? Let us know your favorite find in the comments.

[Ed Note: Hagerty Marketplace reached out to see if we’d be interested in partnering on a couple of posts to support this collection. Of course, we said that we’d love to. Look at these great cars! FYI: If you click on the links above to view this collection and, especially, if you register to bid, they’ll know you came via The Autopian. – MH]