So where is the market now?

[Sydsmith]

From time to time I wander through the advertising medium and look at where the market is on prices for similar cars to those I own.

I have been looking on the dreaded fleabay recently at SP250 in particular. There are a couple of restoration projects that were listed recently. Because I dared to look at one of them yesterday, fleabay sent me a notice today saying hurry up and make an offer 29 people have also looked at it in the past 24 hours and there are 31 watchers.

I thought that was quite remarkable, are there really 31 people out there interested in buying an SP250 to restore, that sort of suggests that either the SP250 is of particular interest, lots of folks have them on their notification list out of interest only, or there is a very buoyant market for SP250 restoration projects?

[Brian-H]

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/175100902508 ??? relisted from https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/175062082547 which was relisted from https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/175005360007 which was relisted from https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/174981545819 which was relisted from .......

Buy It Now , or Make Offer, presently 36 watchers

There's probably many tens of people who have also seen the ad, some or all having an SP250 themselves (but not all living in the UK). Of those many tens, N have put it in their watch list, X to be able to more easily find it when they want to see if and when it did sell and if it went for an offer price - reason being to wonder how many bars of gold their own is worth. Y have made offers which have been rejected but they continue to watch, Z may be thinking of clicking B.I.N.

Note that N = X + Y + Z where X is much larger than Y, and Y is larger than Z e.g. Y = 2 (neither is me) and Z = 1 (not me either)

[Sydsmith]

Interesting analogy and research Brian.

Could he be the architect of his own downfall the way his listing reads, "do it my way or don't waste my time".

I guess he has been mucked about but perhaps a more gentle approach and a bit more effort with the description might help him sell it, he certainly has the interest.

[classiclife]

When eBay sellers narrow all possible conduits of communication to just one channel, a little alarm bell starts to ring.

Being mucked about is, I regret to say, part of a sellers life and has to be accepted as an overhead. I agree that a more open response to contact may prove beneficial, especially when trying to sell an item at £15K.

Regards.

Richard.

[Brian-H]

I keep ebay searches on Consort stuff but I don't do ebay searches on any of the V8 cars, so I could only go as far back as October, advert for which also says "re advertised etc etc" so it's difficult to know whether the ad started life as an auction.

In the nearly 20 years that I've used ebay.co.uk , out of all the items that I have had searches on, I think I only ever saw one item which went for more on the 2nd auction attempt, but IIRC it was a car, the seller was canny, and waited about 6 months before trying again.

My conclusion is that if you don't let the item go at the first attempt and don't wait many months before re-advertising it again, then you won't get more than you could have got at the first attempt (unless of course one used several shill bidders on the first attempt, never sold anything myself so not my tactic LOL). Furthermore I reckon that re-advertising something over and over again just annoys the market looking at the item, and the only person a seller would catch would be someone naive and completely new to the market.

[Sydsmith]

That all makes sense Brian and having bought two cars from ebay but not on ebay, I can confirm that what you see on that market place is not always what happens, both purchases were concluded by negotiating with the seller after the auction failed to sell the cars.

12years ago, my SP was discussed on the old forum and it was surmised it was a dog, having been touted on ebay for some time and failed to reach reserve at auction.

I spoke to the vendor and what annoyed him most was none of those who made silly offers ever bothered to look at the car. I took a chance and went to see it, a 400 miles round trip, there were obvious faults and it was clear the MOT was a fudge and he knew it. After a hard but good natured haggle I bought the car for well below his target price.

The second car had again been touted on ebay, I went to look at the car and again apart from a tyre kicker and cheeky dealer the vendor had been treated very badly by prospective buyers, again there had been an MOT fudge and he knew he was asking too much, but a friendly haggle did the trick.

In this case I recon with good SP's asking £35-40k and top end SP's asking £50k plus, one dealer is asking over £60k, the car must be worth a look if anyone with the right skills is in the market place. A good haggle on the doorstep would buy it for less, £20k spent on it would still make it a good value car. Syd