Anyone know the story..

[w. mitty]

So if someone is not interested in a no reserve auction and they think there property is so great, why not just put a price on it and sell it? It is because they are hoping someone will come in and overpay. No one whines then. Only when they underpay. Auctions are a dice roll - you play, you win or loose.

Larry, point well made, and I think we are in agreement. Regarding the quote from above: As an owner of a GT, I would be just the guy you are discussing: I'm NOT interested in a no reserve auction because I KNOW that the GT is a very special car, and the market is just starting to recognize that fact. Therefore, If I was a seller, I would control my own destiny by listing the car for sale myself. It just isn't worth the gamble to me that someone at BJ will belly up to the free bar a few too many times and will come in over the money.

BJ makes sense for institutional sellers who want to sell at "fair market value" in its most natural definition, what a willing buyer would pay a willing seller on a given day. This is, in my professional experience, often used where the vehicles were owned by an estate.

For us little guys, however, a no reserve auction just does not make sense.

BTW, lets to a Prescott run one of these days

 

[Neilda]

Thanks Bony - I still don't get why the auctioneer has to deliberately go out of his way to sound so 'rural/agricultural'
"whhhhhhhhoooooooo'dgiveme 25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,2525,25,25,25,25,25,
25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,. 27,27,27,27......etc and all said as one word!
Sounds silly to these English ears when selling sophisticated motor cars. It also looked like the auction house had
employees encouraging bidders to keep bidding - but maybe I didn't understand what they were doing.

I've bought and sold cars at auctions and I'm always left rather unimpressed with the auction houses - they know little
about the cars and indemnify themselves against everything. When I sold a car recently, I had to write the description
of the car and provide the photographs, they charged me for putting the car in the catalogue and then, of course,
took a huge slice of commisison.

Friend of mine bought a rare car recently (I'd better not say what, when and how), turns out that the car was a fake -
real car, but engine, chassis and most other parts didn't match. Would the auction house support him? No, of course not.
He got his money back - but had to go to court and the final irony was that the auction house got to keep their commission!!

Sorry, that's a bit of a rant - but I just feel it's 'money for old rope' sometimes. I'll still go to auctions and will still buy the
cars of course!

 

[B O N Y]

Neil...
I understand your feelings exactly. Unless you really know the car, better stay away.
In the USA cars are built for auction, some are built well, some need to be rebuilt the day after the sale. Why buy something that has never been really driven and shaken out?
There are so many suspect American cars that unless you can really trace the history, the
odds of a fakeydo are great. The last two cars I sold where done so because they turned out to be not what I thought I had purchased. I felt taken.
Cheers,
daniel

 

[AZGT]

BTW

Keep thinking about a conversation that BONY and I had at last years B-J dinner.

We discussed the problem with generating full value in a lot of the auctions is the saturation of the cars. Say you want to buy a midyear Corvette, and there are other buyers also. Well, if there are two, the prices will be good. But.....when there are 50, the top one or two items will get the real money, then it drops off signficantly.

Imagine the $1,000,000.00 ZR1. Yes, I know why it got the money, but would 10 of them in the same sale get $1,000,000.00. You know the answer to that. How about if there were 15 cars Shelby had driven?

So with the shift in the auctions from classic to muscle cars, the outcome changes. When they were classic car auctions, the muscle was the one of the kind ZR1. Now with most of the auctions doing muscle cars, you have 10 ZR1s. You have seen the end result.

 

[Neilda]

In the USA cars are built for auction, some are built well, some need to be rebuilt the day after the sale.

I didn't know that... sounds like a minefield.