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How bad is the collector market getting


Joe in Canada

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How bad is the collector market getting that some sellers seem to have given up trying to sell their car. As this fellow gave up trying to sell his Dodge Charger. Makes you think how things will be 40 years from now and thinking you may see Model T in the scrap yard again after a 100 year absence.

https://driving.ca/dodge/charger/auto-news/news/man-tired-of-being-low-balled-by-buyers-crushes-classic-dodge-charger

 

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I think the seller's actions are a little extreme. However, I can understand the frustration of trying to sell. There seems to be no end the idiotic, disrespectful people who contact you as a seller. People who low ball you with a text before they have even seen the car.  Then there are those who set a date to meet and don't bother showing up or updating you. Then the idiots you told to "go away and leave you alone" come back to harass again with another text. Taunting you again with condescending remarks. We haven't even touched on the the scammers who work off-shore on an oil rig and want to buy your car.

 

Buying is easy....Selling is not for the faint of heart.

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Very good topic Joe.

I too wonder if a lot of our Antique cars will be in the Scrap Yard in the future with the interest in the hobby dropping off.

I know a senior fellow with three grown up sons and not one of them has an interest in his 1938 Ford Truck. So where will the truck go when he is gone ?

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He showed them that he wouldn't take less than he thought the car was worth by destroying the car so it was worthless.   Um, okay.

 

As the old saying goes, "Don't cut off your nose to spite your face." 

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Last time I checked, the value of everything is based on supply and demand. Just because one thinks his car, house, watch, or any other asset is worth XXX dollars doesn’t make it so. Any tangible object has a market price that it will sell at, often times the seller doesn’t have a realistic number. This isn’t a car market issue.........it’s a seller with a temper tantrum. What’s the car worth......I have no idea, as post war cars are of no interest to me. If he gave it to me I would have refused. I’m sure there are many people out there that would have gladly purchased it. The guy is an idiot........in the literal sense of the word.

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I can certainly understand his frustration with all the BS buyers dump out there sometimes.

 

Myself, I wouldn't have crushed it. These days I find its just easier to put the car/boat/trinket/etc in the barn and let it sit than to try and wring a few bucks out of some perspective buyer that shows up and points out every flaw in their eye and then offers you peanuts. It works for me, makes me less irritable.

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It's incredibly easy to sell a car if you really want to.  Many consignment dealers will come take it off your hands and gladly sell it for you.  If a car is not selling, it is always because of 2 things, the owner or the price.  Either the price is too high, or the seller is unreasonable and difficult to deal with.

Edited by 39BuickEight (see edit history)
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It's not about the money. It's about dealing with the "public". In a recent post I said rather than sell my unwanted stuff, car and otherwise, I usually just give it away or scrap it. That goes for car parts, campers, lawn mowers, chain saws, tools... you name it. All in decent working order.

This guys approach is the same. It's just a matter of scale and level of frustration...............Bob

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Guest broker'bob

I was a Real Estate Broker for 35 years        the value of homes or any thing else is    WHAT A BUYER WILL PAY IN A REASONABLE TIME  in real Estate it is ----location, cost of money, and which style is hot    all continuisly change     years ago popcorn ceilings were in vogue    now it is considered ugly        some of my sellers told me they would burn down their house rather that   GIVE IT AWAY !!!   same with cars   there is a new generation buying cars and as in realestate the buyer establises the value    I have two cars of the early 30s   did not pay allot and did the  restoration my self  and got enjoyment and experience   what ever it is worth to a buyer    so be it     I would not crush it because some buyers don't agree with my feeling about value

PA Plymouth.jpg

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This has nothing to do with "the market." It's a guy being frustrated with the crap that routinely goes on in the hobby, most of which is related to the participants thinking it should also be profitable for everyone involved. I totally get it.

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It may have been in 1975 that I was told to get interested in the "cars of my youth". Never happened, never looked in the show rooms, never noticed them on the road, NO INTEREST. Brass cars, Model T & A Fords race cars are the things I enjoy in the hobby, NOT the parking lot stuff. Never got to the level of flipping cars, but EVERY Pre WWII part I bought at Hershey this year sold in two weeks. MY HOBBY is doing fine. Bob 

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1 hour ago, Bhigdog said:

It's not about the money. It's about dealing with the "public". In a recent post I said rather than sell my unwanted stuff, car and otherwise, I usually just give it away or scrap it. That goes for car parts, campers, lawn mowers, chain saws, tools... you name it. All in decent working order.

This guys approach is the same. It's just a matter of scale and level of frustration...............Bob

 

As I type this I am emptying my house for sale........instead of having a tag sale with hundreds of people looking through my life’s accumulated stuff.....I have been giving it all away. It will help my family, friends, and neighbors in need. I keep my privacy, my sanity, and don’t take the beat down of things I cherish and place great value on finding out no one wants them or places value on them. This week I have tossed out 80 percent of the sentimental things in my life .........into the trash, and am paying to get rid of them. I knew it would be this way.......but it isn’t easy. Such is life.........

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Cars are cars, the market is what it is and new, used, or classic, only the people who live by it everyday have any idea what's hot, what's not and what's worth what. There are buyers, shoppers, dreamers and tire kickers. If you expect to make a dime selling a car you better own it right and if you have any emotional attachment to the car, you also need to be pretty thick skinned as there are a lot more shoppers, dreamers and tire kickers than there are buyers.

 

40 minutes ago, padgett said:

if he could not even get $5k for a 70 Charger there must have been something very rong with either the car, location, title, or the presentation

1 hour ago, Matt Harwood said:

It's a guy being frustrated with the crap that routinely goes on in the hobby

 

 

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It's always been this way.  Buy high, sell low, or just keep it.   But boy, have I had fun with old cars.

I had a guy hunt me down to talk about my un-restored 35 Ford pickup, which is not for sale.   We talked values and agreed

on it's value.

He couldn't understand why I wouldn't sell it to him if we agreed in it's value.  I told him if it was for sale I would, but it's not

for sale.   As I told him, I'd rather have the truck than the money.  

Then I got it out and drove to a hit & miss engine show.  Still not for sale.

Someday I may regret not taking his money, but now I still enjoy my truck.

 

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30 minutes ago, edinmass said:

 

As I type this I am emptying my house for sale........instead of having a tag sale with hundreds of people looking through my life’s accumulated stuff.....I have been giving it all away. It will help my family, friends, and neighbors in need. I keep my privacy, my sanity, and don’t take the beat down of things I cherish and place great value on finding out no one wants them or places value on them. This week I have tossed out 80 percent of the sentimental things in my life .........into the trash, and am paying to get rid of them. I knew it would be this way.......but it isn’t easy. Such is life.........

I'll never move, but have thought of selling off the unneeded things that seam to be every were, putting all the parts and related things for each project on one place is another thing I need to concentrate on. Basement & garage have to have two car spaces worth of unwanted stuff. Bob 

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10 hours ago, Mark Gregory said:

Very good topic Joe.

I too wonder if a lot of our Antique cars will be in the Scrap Yard in the future with the interest in the hobby dropping off.

I know a senior fellow with three grown up sons and not one of them has an interest in his 1938 Ford Truck. So where will the truck go when he is gone ?

Forty years from now I'll bet that 90% of the collector cars will be scrap. Availability of fuel , type of fuel, and a public that has been brainwashed into thinking our cars are a environmental curse will do the job.

 

As far as the charger goes, If I can't get my price then no one can have it. So there!

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1 hour ago, edinmass said:

 

As I type this I am emptying my house for sale........instead of having a tag sale with hundreds of people looking through my life’s accumulated stuff.....I have been giving it all away. It will help my family, friends, and neighbors in need. I keep my privacy, my sanity, and don’t take the beat down of things I cherish and place great value on finding out no one wants them or places value on them. This week I have tossed out 80 percent of the sentimental things in my life .........into the trash, and am paying to get rid of them. I knew it would be this way.......but it isn’t easy. Such is life.........

 

My wife was the executrix of an elderly ladies estate. The lady had amassed a collection of Breyer model horses and anything equine. Thousands of items packed away in every corner of her broken down house. Over the years she had spent many thousands of dollars collecting and hording them. She loved them. They were her life.

They all sold at auction for next to nothing. Her life reduced to vultures picking over the physical remains.

It's all just stuff, guys.

Ed.....You got it right...................Bob

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7 hours ago, 1935Packard said:

He showed them that he wouldn't take less than he thought the car was worth by destroying the car so it was worthless.   Um, okay.

 

As the old saying goes, "Don't cut off your nose to spite your face." 

Yeah, that's what I felt like doing with my '39 Buick convertible sedan when it wouldn't bring what I knew it was worth, and would have brought 5 years ago.  But, it still brought a pretty decent amount of money and that's in mutual funds now.  I'm getting $233 a month and if I live five years then it'll have brought about what it was worth.  To lose one's head doesn't work out to one's benefit.  It's not a time to be spending money on an old car though

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The hobby is not dead. We are not going to scrap all the old cars. Tastes change. Different cars come in and out of favor. Prices go up and down. But the hobby always continues. But too many have watched a tv show where you buy a car for next to nothing and by the end of the half hour episode the car has been sold for a huge profit. Then the happy flipper rubs it in the face of the buyer how bad he screwed them and runs off to buy more hair gel. The sad thing today is so many folks want to be the guy with the hair gel. Buy what you like, drive it and enjoy it. Don't buy a car because its "Hot right now" or a magazine editor who doesn't even own a collector car thinks you should. Buy what you like. That is the best advice I can give anyone.

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4 hours ago, 39BuickEight said:

It's incredibly easy to sell a car if you really want to.  Many consignment dealers will come take it off your hands and gladly sell it for you.  If a car is not selling, it is always because of 2 things, the owner or the price.

I think that is not true.   Old people aren't buying, but they're selling and younger people don't want pre-War cars.  That's what I think.  Consignment dealers, some are good, many others are crooks.....and I speak from experience.   Some, like Harwood, are really collectors at heart while most of the others aren't.  I don't think the hobby is going down, just the part of the hobby I've loved for sixty years.  The hobby has simply moved on, as it has done in the past.  I don't know if any modern cars will ever become collector cars.....maybe some Dodge Chargers or Cadillacs.  However, a lot of young people love the big, cumbersome boxes that look like giant station wagons.  Tastes change and no small amount of  your people prefer the electronic playthings like cell phones that walk and talk.  If the hobby fails, I won't be around to see it.  I'm just enjoying the first National Baseball Champion team in Washington, DC since 1924.

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4 minutes ago, Dynaflash8 said:

I think that is not true.   Old people aren't buying, but they're selling and younger people don't want pre-War cars.  That's what I think.  Consignment dealers, some are good, many others are crooks.....and I speak from experience.   Some, like Harwood, are really collectors at heart while most of the others aren't.  I don't think the hobby is going down, just the part of the hobby I've loved for sixty years.  The hobby has simply moved on, as it has done in the past.  I don't know if any modern cars will ever become collector cars.....maybe some Dodge Chargers or Cadillacs.  However, a lot of young people love the big, cumbersome boxes that look like giant station wagons.  Tastes change and no small amount of  your people prefer the electronic playthings like cell phones that walk and talk.  If the hobby fails, I won't be around to see it.  I'm just enjoying the first National Baseball Champion team in Washington, DC since 1924.

 

We sell more 30's and 40's cars to folks 35 years of age and under then we ever have in over 30 years of selling collector cars.

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2 hours ago, Steve_Mack_CT said:

A mean spirited person could call this guy up and say "is the Charger still available, I have a $15,000 budget and will be in the area this weekend." 😁😁

Likely already happened multiple times when he had the car.

 Guy waits around for the buyer to show. One of two things happen. The guy never calls or shows or the guy shows and spends his time running the car down but obviously had no intention of ever buying.

Hence the trip to the crusher.

Just an in your face way of saying "all you jerks can... G F Y S"

I can dig it......Bob

Edited by Bhigdog (see edit history)
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9 minutes ago, Bhigdog said:

Likely already happened multiple times when he had the car.

 Guy waits around for the buyer to show. One of two things happen. The guy never calls or shows or the guy shows and spends his time running the car down but obviously had no intention of ever buying.

Hence the trip to the crusher.

Just an in your face way of saying "all you jerks can go F Y S"

I can dig it......Bob

Priceless.

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Are also neglecting the environmental factors: the HP race is back and has gotten silly. JDM has gone wild. Every year there are MILLIONS of new cars entering the market and diluting demand.

 

I would wager that the old car market would be better if the 55 MPH speed limit had never gone away. However it did and leaving my development in any direction am in 45s and 70 is just a couple of miles up the road. Now probably those up in what Road and Track once called the "Slow Corner" (north and east of DC) do not car as much as Texans ("at 55mph you do not ever get anywhere") or Floridians (109 miles of Turnpike with one exit).

 

Consequently I do understand the resto-mod craze that just began a few year ago and is not only diluting the classic car market, it is outpacing it.

 

Will admit to being somewhat contrarian and my needs/wants are different from many here. OTOH at some time in my life, almost all postwar cars were new and yet I am only interested in some, mostly roadsters (am on a retractible kick right now and my project car just passed 20 years old) and Grand Touring (70 mph in AC with lotsa luggage room.. Yes, there were retractables 20 years ago that were not Fords).

 

So the collector car market is not bad, it is just spreading out.

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9 hours ago, edinmass said:

 

As I type this I am emptying my house for sale........instead of having a tag sale with hundreds of people looking through my life’s accumulated stuff.....I have been giving it all away. It will help my family, friends, and neighbors in need. I keep my privacy, my sanity, and don’t take the beat down of things I cherish and place great value on finding out no one wants them or places value on them. This week I have tossed out 80 percent of the sentimental things in my life .........into the trash, and am paying to get rid of them. I knew it would be this way.......but it isn’t easy. Such is life.........

This is the new way folks up here are cleaning up their house without all the hassle. You can even have them have a person at the house on the one day set for all pickup. Antiques are going for almost nothing on this site. I watch for the high end estate sales and do well.

https://maxsold.com/?_ga=2.223011737.384939775.1572411495-1922816246.1570161756

Edited by Joe in Canada (see edit history)
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1 hour ago, Brass is Best said:

The hobby is not dead. We are not going to scrap all the old cars. Tastes change. Different cars come in and out of favor. Prices go up and down. But the hobby always continues. But too many have watched a tv show where you buy a car for next to nothing and by the end of the half hour episode the car has been sold for a huge profit. Then the happy flipper rubs it in the face of the buyer how bad he screwed them and runs off to buy more hair gel. The sad thing today is so many folks want to be the guy with the hair gel. Buy what you like, drive it and enjoy it. Don't buy a car because its "Hot right now" or a magazine editor who doesn't even own a collector car thinks you should. Buy what you like. That is the best advice I can give anyone.

 You are a wishful thinker. Reality will prove this wrong.

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