SMH, What Are They Thinking?? Options

[relentless]

Sorry if this has already been discussed,but I must say the BIN price leaves me with disgust!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Porsche-914-/28193...em=281934004539

For a flipping shell ffs!

This is more than I bought a good /6 for just a few short years ago.

[colingreene]

Error Item removed.

[carr914]

I don't see a problem. One of the -6s I bought in '07, the guy was asking $8k and was nearly rusted in half. At the time a running complete 914-6 was in high Teens, low 20's - now the same car would be $75k+

[mepstein]

how long do you have to wait to make money before it's not disgusting? I call it knowing the market and having the personal freedom to sell for what the market will bare. You also have the personal freedom not to buy. For a guy who just wrecked their 6, this might be a godsend.

[gandalf_025]

I don't know what reality some of you folks live in....
But these kind of prices are here.....

Do you post on 356, 911 and 930 Forums saying they are overpriced ?

I don't like it any more than you do, but the prices for older,
limited production Porsche's is going up...

The GOOD OLD DAYS are gone unfortunately Sorry...

[bulitt]

I don't know what reality some of you folks live in....
But these kind of prices are here.....

Do you post on 356, 911 and 930 Forums saying they are overpriced ?

I don't like it any more than you do, but the prices for older,
limited production Porsche's is going up...

The GOOD OLD DAYS are gone unfortunately Sorry...

True. Until the market collapses as it did @1987 then prices reset. At which time some folks lose allot of coin.

[somd914]

Free market hard at work.

I've always found it interesting that in theory most embrace this concept, but when it comes time to sell in a weak market or buy in a strong market, their opinions change...

[billh1963]

True. Until the market collapses as it did @1987 then prices reset. At which time some folks lose allot of coin.

Those signs of weakening are already here..... auction results and even casual observation shows the pricing escalation has stopped for "regular" cars ("regular" meaning cars that are not ultra rare or with unique history). Next step is the price "correction".

[rick 918-S]

Asking and selling are two entirely different topics. The car does look like a good candidate though. I bet if a guy walk up with a wad of cash the car could be bought for less.

[rick 918-S]

True. Until the market collapses as it did @1987 then prices reset. At which time some folks lose allot of coin.

Those signs of weakening are already here..... auction results and even casual observation shows the pricing escalation has stopped for "regular" cars ("regular" meaning cars that are not ultra rare or with unique history). Next step is the price "correction".

Very interesting. Do you have any facts to back this up? I'm always interested in what's happening in this economy. I never thought the escalation with regard to these cars was all that real anyway. Lots of stuff listed for super high prices but nothing selling the stratosphere. I've several cars asking even in the 70's that don't sell because of a missing engine, over personalization, poorly done repairs, even over restored.

[r_towle]

Lenny is a well known dealer here locally, he knows what the car is worth and he has probably had it in his storage place for a long time

[gandalf_025]

Len has had that car stored indoors for a lot of years.
I looked at it about 3 years ago.. It had no doors or lids on it then.

He is not one to rush a sale over money.. He has time...

[iwanta914-6]

This is more than I bought a good /6 for just a few short years ago.

In that case, you should be ecstatic that the prices have risen to this. That Six you bought for less than $25K you can try to sell now for over $100K. Not saying you would get $100K but nobody could blame you for trying to sell it for that. Free market prevails!

[stevegm]

Len has had that car stored indoors for a lot of years.
I looked at it about 3 years ago.. It had no doors or lids on it then.

He is not one to rush a sale over money.. He has time...

I agree. He has had a couple of them in a barn for years. I spoke to him about it last year. He is in no rush. As was pointed out above, we are only seeing asking prices. Typically something that triggers a supply/demand mismatch is what causes a collapse in the market prices. IMHO, this is much less likely with a low production car like the six. I think it is unlikely we will see them come back down in price.

[Larmo63]

"Various parts sold off the car over the past 40 years, including Motor and oil tank, lights, original doors & lids and other minor items."

Lol.

[gandalf_025]

Just in case anyone thinks this guy is clueless about 914-6's

here are a few pictures of a car that sat next to this car for many years in storage.
He sold it in 2001.

first is as it came out of the barn.



Then as it is now..



and a quick history

[billh1963]

Very interesting. Do you have any facts to back this up? I'm always interested in what's happening in this economy. I never thought the escalation with regard to these cars was all that real anyway. Lots of stuff listed for super high prices but nothing selling the stratosphere. I've several cars asking even in the 70's that don't sell because of a missing engine, over personalization, poorly done repairs, even over restored.

Did Someone Yell 'Fire!'?


Did Someone Yell ‘FIRE!’?
February 2016
Written By Kevin Watts


As we wrap up the first multi-house auction week of the year, the only question I have is: “Did someone yell fire?” The movie was playing but no one was in the theater. This past week in Scottsdale left us asking the question, “What’s the difference between a collector car and a used car?” The auction houses tried to put on a brave face while staring at the eye of the perfect storm. Thinking there were light winds, they moved ahead in a small boat with no paddles. Last year here in Arizona we saw $294,000,000 in auction results hammered over the week bringing the auction houses a healthy $58,800,000 in commissions (10% sellers & 10% buyers) with bidder and entry fees adding a lot more to the bottom line. The rarest-of-the-rare were here in numbers which helped disguise the fact that the more common and pedestrian cars were just filler.

Doubt started building a few months ago as the lots were announced. The big dollar, rare, and desirable cars were few and far between, instead being replaced with much more commonplace metal. The “Ron Pratt effect” was the rumbling we heard all week in 2015 as Pratt sold a large collection of the most rare and desirable of Americana for a whopping $40.44 million through Barrett-Jackson. The other auction houses filled their catalogs trying to compete with the rare and the best.

This year it was not so. It seems everyone had all ready forgotten that RM/Sotheby’s Biennial December auction sucked a quick $73.5 million out of the market just six weeks ago. None of the auction houses wanted to take the lead in Arizona, and the overall results show their lack of effort. Porsche was well represented with more than 100 cars scattered between the five houses, though only a handful were beyond ordinary. Looking at the consignments would make you think it was the year of the 930 Turbo with more offerings than eBay on any given day, and with quality all over the map. If you wanted a new (used) Super Car you found them at every venue. To put it simply, every used car dealer pulled their cars off eBay and Auto Trader, and entered them in the auctions instead. In years past, rare, highly desirable cars had always been offered. This year? Poof! They were gone with very few exceptions. The electricity was never in the air.

The event this year, falling on the last weekend of January, was two weeks later than its normal mid-month dates. So the cars that would normally have been reserved for Scottsdale showed up in Paris on the first weekend in February instead. The Paris auction dates made the European buyers question whether to come to Arizona and rush back across the Atlantic, or to stay home and go to Paris. They stayed home!

Gooding & Company announced a few weeks earlier that they were going to auction three Porsches from Jerry Seinfeld’s collection in mid-March at Amelia Island. Every media outlet from Bloomberg to CNBC had an opinion, ranging from the sky is falling (most) to this being an opportunity for someone to pick up one of his cars. I have good news, its not three cars, its more than a dozen, in fact, it’s nearly two dozen! Oh my God, the Porsche market is coming crashing down! Seinfeld’s selling his collection!

Stop! Jerry has been a rabid Porsche collector for more than two decades. Like all collectors, he made a few good buys and a few bad buys but he always continued to collect. Do you really think Jerry is selling off and that he is going to stop collecting Porsches? Not a chance. Do you really think a dozen or two-dozen cars will make a dent in a collection that he has been accumulating for more than 25 years?

I will say I don’t know how many cars Jerry Seinfeld owns. I don’t want to know. I will also tell you if you have 100 cars (a guess, but I’d take the “over”!) you can’t keep them all running, clean, and serviced without a full-time team of mechanics and detailers, and stock in a battery company. Could you imagine how little time someone in his position has to truly enjoy the cars? Everyone is knocking on his door wanting something; his wife and children are at home waiting for dad. Hell, President Obama went for a ride and drove with him in a Corvette! Jerry’s time to go for a ride in his passions is very limited. If you walked in your garage and decided to go for a ride – but you had so many cars parked in front of the one you wanted to drive that you became a parking attendant for an hour instead of enjoying going for a ride – what would you do? I’d thin the herd, hang on to my favorite ones, and spend my time on the roads. Jerry, enjoy the drive!

The Porsche amateur Day Traders / Collectors / Brokers / automotive advisors / country club buddies tried to ride the coattails of the true collector car market. And they just got bitch-slapped. The true collectors know the difference between a used car and a collected car. The prices of their average cars brought average money as they deserved. And when you deduct the 20% in commissions paid and the $4,000 to $5,000 to get them here, they got slaughtered!

The vast majority of Porsches at the auction were from dealers. Not much special, not much rare, not much exceptional, and not much historical significance. I’ll use 1978-1988 Porsche 930 Turbos as the examples. The 3.3-liter, intercooled, 930 Turbo is not particularly rare as they made roughly 15,790 (for all markets) from which to choose. One such car here was a 36,000-mile 930 with few chips, some faded trim, and wheel caps. This was a nice original car but it was not exceptionally rare. The estimate was $130-to-$160K and it sold for $118,250 all in. When you subtract the 20% in commissions, the entry fees, and the shipping and detailing costs, the seller is lucky if he netted $90,000. This was a decent deal for the buyer. The 930 had decent mileage, but my fear was, “Had it been serviced?”

The easy part is buying one, but the expensive part is completely servicing it and making it a truly safe drive. Tires, brake lines, oil leaks, etc., are an issue with every car that has sat up for some time, and Turbos are the worst. The new owner should not be shocked to find it needs $20K in service when it gets to its new home. The seller, on the other hand, probably had this car for sale for a long time, and I’m sure he expected much more for the car. I’m guessing it will take a long time to get the bitter taste out of his mouth.

The perfect combination of what makes a truly collectible car is in the details. High-level concours restorations take years and they can be ruined with the last five percent of the details or missed details. We saw plenty of Porsches here missing the details; in fact I’d say only a couple great examples qualified this year. The original Porsches need to be low mileage examples, unrestored, spectacularly clean originals, with indisputable histories and great service records. I didn’t see any of those in Scottsdale. I did see a lot of average excuses that someone famous may have farted in but was well used since then.

The Amelia Island sales will be the acid test for the collectible Porsches. The auction houses will load up on the used cars with their owners trying to pass them off as truly collectible and desirable. Remember, they get paid 20% in the end, and they don’t put reserves on anything under the $300K range. The house always wins! The only thing I’m sure of in the upcoming auctions is that you won’t see “As seen on eBay” posted in any of the windows.

This year the used cars outnumbered the collector cars. A few of our clients we came to meet got on their planes and had lunch at home on Saturday afternoon instead of sticking around and bidding. The overall sales versus the “no sales,” and the prices in either case reflected that. Only $242,000,000 million in cars traded hands, leaving the auction houses to split only $48,400,000 amongst them. They took a $10,000,000 haircut, but – even worse – consignees took a $50,000,000 bath.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Also, look at cars for sale on Pelican and other forums. Last year decent cars (and even not so decent) were scooped up within hours if not minutes. Now, there are a number of really nice cars that have not moved.

I'm not saying prices will return to previous levels...they won't barring major economic collapse (in which case buying a 914/6 won't be on my or many other people's list). Boom-Bust cycles are nothing new. The only question is, when it happens how far will prices fall?

[stevegm]

Very interesting. Do you have any facts to back this up? I'm always interested in what's happening in this economy. I never thought the escalation with regard to these cars was all that real anyway. Lots of stuff listed for super high prices but nothing selling the stratosphere. I've several cars asking even in the 70's that don't sell because of a missing engine, over personalization, poorly done repairs, even over restored.

I will say I don’t know how many cars Jerry Seinfeld owns. I don’t want to know. I will also tell you if you have 100 cars (a guess, but I’d take the “over”!) you can’t keep them all running, clean, and serviced without a full-time team of mechanics and detailers, and stock in a battery company. Could you imagine how little time someone in his position has to truly enjoy the cars? Everyone is knocking on his door wanting something; his wife and children are at home waiting for dad. Hell, President Obama went for a ride and drove with him in a Corvette! Jerry’s time to go for a ride in his passions is very limited. If you walked in your garage and decided to go for a ride – but you had so many cars parked in front of the one you wanted to drive that you became a parking attendant for an hour instead of enjoying going for a ride – what would you do? I’d thin the herd, hang on to my favorite ones, and spend my time on the roads. Jerry, enjoy the drive!

Interesting read. Thanks for posting it.

There is another possible perspective. I know nothing about Seinfeld's collection. Nor, do I think his decision to sell is any indication of the strength of the overall Porsche market. But, it may be as simple as what his goals were when he bought the cars. He has said he isn't a "collector." Rather, my guess is that he considers himself an investor who invested in what he loves. He began buying Porsches when he first started coming into money. And he continued as he made more money. Now it's time to cash the investments in. He can afford now to sell a few, and put the money somewhere else. He is a smart guy, and they were good investments. The average American stock portfolio lost 3% last year. Some collector/investor quality, classic Porsche categories grew in value by 135%. If you know what your buying, they make for a nice investment. My guess is that he is just rolling those investments over. Just my .02.

[billh1963]

The most interesting statement was this:

The Porsche amateur Day Traders / Collectors / Brokers / automotive advisors / country club buddies tried to ride the coattails of the true collector car market. And they just got bitch-slapped. The true collectors know the difference between a used car and a collected car. The prices of their average cars brought average money as they deserved. And when you deduct the 20% in commissions paid and the $4,000 to $5,000 to get them here, they got slaughtered!

[r_towle]

Just in case anyone thinks this guy is clueless about 914-6's

here are a few pictures of a car that sat next to this car for many years in storage.
He sold it in 2001.

first is as it came out of the barn.



Then as it is now..



and a quick history

I almost bought that car.
I had the money at the time....25k.
I should have, but I waited too long....

Rich