Wanted: Harrah's Auction Catalog Sept. 28th 1985

Hello, I work for a private car collection and we have an ex-Harrah's car in our collection. I am looking to purchase a catalog from the 1985 auction. If anybody has one for sale please let me know, if not and somebody would be willing to scan the car I'm looking for I would appreciate the offer as well. Thanks very much!

Send a private message as to which car are looking for?

I think I have all 3 cataloges. Ron

Hi everyone,

Bumping this thread as I am still on the hunt for this catalog if anyone has run across one....

Hi- I have all most all of the Harrah auction catalogs.  I do not have a spare catalog for sale, but I will gladly make and send copies of any particular pages or cars. You can email me directly at: motoringicons@hotmail.com

I worked there  during the mid- 1980s when the auctions occurred. I might have personal knowledge of the car you are inquiring about as well.

Another Year, any luck? Well if not I have one! Brand new just pulled it out of the envelope to veiw dates Let me know if you still have the car in the collection and are still hunting.

Over the last 3 months that particular catalog as well as the others individually as well as all 9  of them together have been on ebay.  They are consistently selling for a dollar more than I bid.

You're setting the price point on those catalogs!  Someone must have found a few cases of them hidden away, I notice one such Ebay ad is in Reno.....

I remember when the sales were announced, and there was concern among car collectors that dumping all those cars at once on the market would drastically reduce all prices (actually, not a bad thing!).  If anything, cars at the auctions brought good money for the time, and had no real impact on the market.

The most fun of Harrah's were the ads that ran each month in Hemmings.  There'd be a list of car parts they were looking for, then there'd be a page or two of cars "surplus to their needs".....some good stuff went through that place, although if you talk to those in the know, the restorations weren't quite as perfect as everyone seemed to think.  There are a lot of cars out there today because Harrah bought them and rebuilt them, making parts and bodies as needed to complete them.

Restorations were not great I'm sure.  Too big of an operation.

There was a complete set of all the catalogs that sold for 145 bucks this weekend.  That would not have been bad but I already have 3 of them.

They had one heck of a research department. We restored a locally built one of very few built assembled car from the Teens. Our car was apparently the only one ever found. At the time Harrah's would do free lance research. We contacted them and they supplied us with the names of 5 owners of our make and model car. Turned out they were the 5 previous owners of our car. The car had never left the town where it was built and three of the previous owners had never heard of Harrahs. Always wondered how they came up with their info.

On 2/28/2017 at 0:20 PM, alsancle said:

Restorations were not great I'm sure.  Too big of an operation.

 

There was a complete set of all the catalogs that sold for 145 bucks this weekend.  That would not have been bad but I already have 3 of them.

Speaking of not great restorations. If you read a few of the articles Henry Austin Clark wrote for Old Cars back in the 1980s you realize that he was not above "restoring" a car with whatever bits and pieces he had around. I was surprised to see a one of a kind brass era car at Hershey that was cobbled together from bits and pieces that Clark had around. He had very little of the original car to start with and made no attempt at authenticity. If a part could be used he used it. He documented the build in his columns.