OT: What is a „fair“ trade-in value?, Or, what “book” to use??? Options

[draganc]

Fellows!

I’m in the business for a new-er car and are trying to determine what would be a fair trade-in value for my car. I know, good luck with that.

It’s a 2004 Mercedes E320 4 Matic wagon, 150k mls, formally purchased as a CPO, no repaint, ALL services done no issues, good to very good condition.

- Outside appearance is a 7out of 10, body and head-lights look great (just cleaned with 3M and they look NEW). Wheels are scratched-up, w/o the scratches it would be at least a 8-9.
- Interior, very clean a solid 8 out of 10.
- I just put new shocks, tires, pad & disk in the past 9 months.

It’s a very decent look car. Perhaps I’m a bit emotional attached to “her” and I know that I will not get any $$$ back for half used tires, brakes and shocks.

The BIG questions is, what is a fair trade-in value?

I checked Kelly’s Blue Book, and they came-up between $8-10k. I checked cars.com, they comparable cars I found are mostly offered by dealers for around $9.5k.
And my MB dealer offered my $5,000 as a trade-in towards a used 2010 ML350. They use some other kind of "book" and he told me that KBB is not accurate.

Let me hear it! How much can I really expect from a dealer, respectively , should I try to list and sell the car by myself on i.e. cars.com?
My take is that for $5k trade-in, I will/should drive the car for at least another 1-2 years or 30k mls and the unload it for one of those “we will offer you a minimum of $3,000 for your trade-in” specials, which they run at MB at least twice a year.

Thanks,
Dragan