Quote:
Originally Posted by Tim7139
Can you kindly expand on this a bit? Since I've done a fair bit of recent price study over the last year I have a question relative to that price range.
Would it be fair to state that anything materially below 50k or so is usually tied to either some damage history, high usage/miles, or a rather poor choice for an engine? I supose there's always a few cars offered because of adverse personal situation.
|
As it is with every used car market (not just cobra replicas)
It falls in to three category's:
Those that want to sell
Those that have to sell
and
Those who are considering a sale "at the right price" and will advertise whatever they are considering selling at a price they decided arbitrarily (a certain close to donor build FFR listed continuously at $98K in the west comes to mind).
Then you have dealer/retail sellers who are in no rush to sell, but want to be able to sell the same type of vehicle over and over again at full retail value. Sometimes they get together with other dealers and start the artificial rise in asking prices (IE: price fixing), soon and by the trickle down effect, the asking pricing go up. However, not all dealers get away with this, several Ferrari dealers got caught in the late 80's and early 90's playing that game with the 308 (Magnum PI) Ferrari's. The dealers for the GT350R/GT500/Eleanor cars got caught up in the same thing, only they went as far as taking a car to a well known auction over and over again and selling it for 200K,300K,450K in an attempt to find suckers to purchase them. (they did find and screw many people out of their hard earned money). Comparing what a dealer asks for a car (one that sits on the market for 8-14+ months at an artificially high price) or two and saying "this is what my private party car should sell for" does not work. The mindset of what sold at auction vs what a private seller can get is also a comparison that does not work. What an importer and largest dealer advertises for, and what a private prty can actually sell their car for is not a good comparison either, as the importer/dealer wants to sell cars, and attempt to ad value for the "investment grade" of one brand over another. Again, while it appears at first to be a great strategy, it actually hurts the market, current owners who buy in to the practice of "don't advertise your car for less than XXXXXXX, if we all advertise higher, we will get higher prices for our cars", it hurts the new owners when they find out they were manipulated, and it eventually leads to a collapse of a specific market after a short time. Think of it as a sort of pyramid scheme of price fixing. Then you end up back where we started, with private sellers offering cars at real world prices, after wasting their time listening to those who stated "you are not asking enough, you'll bring the value of our cars down". These are the same owners who think the car is being sold too cheaply, who are afraid to purchase them and remarket them at higher prices with their own money, hence, back to where it all started, with the basic time and money equation, and whether it is a "I'm bored and want to sell" vs "I need the money for another toy/business deal/etc" mindset of a seller.
The above is a ramble, yes, I know, as I am multitasking, and coming back to this every couple of minutes. Sorry, but you should still get my drift.
Bill S.