Reality Check: Mecum

[davepl]

You might need to subscribe to Infonet for this, but:

http://www.mecum.com/lot-detail.cfm?...=WA0614-185058

1972, Factory 4-speed, Factory air, gauges, looks nice.

Sold for $9000 here in Seattle.

[ArkGL01]

ouch....

[davepl]

And it's the same auction we were talking about earlier where a very tasty 72 short bed 402, probably the top of the value ladder for us, went unsold at $28K and keeps sitting on eBay without hitting reserve.

[srvivor71]

Wow! Ouch is right. Unless there's something bad that's not showing up in the pictures, someone got a bargain. That's a fine looking truck.

[jocko]

what was the sale price? no longer viewable when I click on it!

[davepl]

9000 for the ochre 4x4. I even forgot to mention it was a 4x4, which makes it worse.

No sale on the blue big block. High bid was 28K both at the auction and the last time I saw it on eBay (reserve not met). Seller clearly thinks there's someone out there willing to pay his price, or he's patient.

[leftybass209]

That's what a no reserve auction does. An auction is designed to drive prices of vehicles up by clustering enthusiasts together with money, less enthusiasts equals less bids and more realistic prices. I don't bat an eyelash at super cheap buys or mega-inflated prices because it can and most likely will return to an auction and spends it's life in a revolving door of economics.

[dubds10]

And here I think that's all I'd pay for that truck anyways lol The market is full of guys thinking their rust buckets are worth $4000 when in reality they are still only worth $500-1000. That price for a 4x4 long box is right where it should be. If it were a short box it may have got $15k out of it but even then I see mint 4x4 swb pop up between $15-20k and they take forever to sell here. There are some realistic guys with honest prices and others who are dreamers and watch too many TV shows.

[davepl]

Originally Posted by leftybass209

That's what a no reserve auction does. An auction is designed to drive prices of vehicles up by clustering enthusiasts together with money, less enthusiasts equals less bids and more realistic prices. I don't bat an eyelash at super cheap buys or mega-inflated prices because it can and most likely will return to an auction and spends it's life in a revolving door of economics.

Not sure what you mean about no reserve, as in this case the seller keeps setting the reserve too high (unless you meant the ochre 4x4).

But you do raise an interesting point: cars the sell at auction do seem to come back to auction very frequently, and almost always sell for less. That blue LS6 Chevelle Convertible that had some racing provenance went for over a million, then 600K, then 400K, then 250K, then 185K, and who knows now.

On PowerBlock Power (or whatever Horsepower TV is now) the car Courtney was showing on lead-ins was a Detemaso Pantera that had been built for a woman by the Ring Brothers. They claimed over 4000 hours into it. It's going straight to auction.

Let's say they only spent 50K in parts in materials and buying the car itself; 4000 hours of labor at 90/hr is $360,000 and add in the parts and you're already over $400,000.00

There's no way you can do that at a profit. I have to guess a lot of these are "just pay the price to get it finished and I'll get what I can for it at auction and lick my wounds".