In reply to a message from Shell Yoelin sent Tue 6 Jan 2009:
We are all following Shell’s progress. I, too, saw the Hemmings
article, and Shell correctly says that it describes Mark 2 values
as soft. But the accompanying table suggests the values have
increased. I think soft is right. I’m hoping that the Europeans
start buying back more of their antique cars in the U.S. I saw that
happening years ago when they started buying up the world coins
that had migrated to the U.S. I wasn’t a coin collector, just a
journalist working at Coin World. One of our Jag club members
recently sold two not very nice Mark 1s that were boxed up and
hauled up to Savannah for shipment to, as I recall, Great Britain.
Excuse me, I’ve got to go out to the garage to resume work on my
Mark 2.–
Ron Keysor
Orange Park, Florida, United States
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In reply to a message from Keys sent Tue 6 Jan 2009:
The values on a lot of things are soft right now. Look at the
auction reports in that same Hemmings. That’s not so good for
those of us that have the cars in question, but has a plus side of
possibly making another project more affordable. I can think of a
couple of things I’d like to buy, and now I may get a better deal.
Eventually, they’ll come back up.
Some cars within a marque, and some marques themselves are always
going to be relatively stable investments – not going markedly up
or down, but typically appreciating at approximately the rate of
inflation. That’s good news for the hobbyist, because for the
length of time you’ve owned the car, you’ve basically had it for
free. You’ve put your investment dollar in a fairly safe
investment, and the good news is you’re probably not going to lose
much of it, if any at all. The benefit for the hobbyist is
certainly not the potential profit from sale, but the enjoyment of
the car itself. These are the types of cars that I encourage folks
to buy.
If anything irritates me, it’s not the possibility of the market on
a particular car I own going down – I don’t really care. My cars
are absolutes. What does, is for a car that I may want in the
future, or the cost of parts and accessories being over-inflated by
speculators buying cars at televised auctions. When driving our
Silver Wraith, I frequently want to strangle the folks who come up
and mention the name of one such auction in particular. With this
in mind, I see certain facets of our economy as a good thing – the
values of specific cars which have achieved remarkable over-
inflation will hopefully come back down to a level of better sanity.
If anything irritates me, it’s not the possibility of the market on
a particular car I own going down – I don’t really care. My cars
are absolutes. What does, is for a car that I may want in the
future, or the cost of parts and accessories being over-inflated by
speculators buying cars at televised auctions.
The televised auctions feature speculators selling cars, and dupes
buying them. It makes for great TV to see some rich guy pay 30-100%
more than a car is worth for the privilege of, perhaps, getting his
face on TV. When he grows tired of the car, it’ll go back to auction
where he’ll probably lose a lot of money on it. People who adjust
their own car’s worth based upon the TV auction typically find they
can’t sell their car for those kind of prices, so they’ll put it away
until they either need the space or the money, and then the car will
get sold to the first buyer with cash, regardless of whatever the
earlier car sold for on TV.
If you want to see heartbreak, take a look at the claimed restoration
costs on some high-line cars (RR and Packard, for example) and the
asking prices. I saw one in the latest Hemmings that was a claimed
$200K+ concours quality job where the motivated seller was asking
$59K. The economy is bad, and cars are coming out of the garages to
raise cash. It’s a great time to buy if you’ve been hoarding a big
stash of 100’s in your sock drawer.
Craig
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