The 10 Best Places To Find An Affordable Classic Car Pt 3: eBay Motors – The Power of Completed Listings

Part III: 10. eBay Motors – The Power of Completed Listings

Knowledge of true market prices and values is obviously important to anyone looking to buy their next affordable classic car. Some people turn to resources such as Kelley Blue Book for such information, but the Blue Book is a better resource for insurance companies than a buyer or seller. Just as my father told me when I was a kid getting into baseball card collecting, “A card is only worth what someone will pay you for it” the same is true of cars. Kelley Blue Book can say one thing, but until a car sells, numbers in that book are just numbers with no real meaning and they can become outdated quickly.

eBay Motors Completed Listings link

On an eBay page of a particular car model, far down on the left hand side of the page, there is always a link “Completed Listings”. This should be your first stop when trying to figure out market prices. This link leads to pages of completed auctions from that category from the past few weeks. You’ll see the cars that sold and their selling price as well as the cars that did not sell, the highest non winning bid or the “Buy It Now” price that nobody took. These are real transactions, either money changed hands or it didn’t. A no sale? Someone had an unrealistic reserve or Buy It  Now price. Sold car? What was the price? You can look at each auction, see how many bidders there were, all the details.

With this information you can figure out what cars people might be having a hard time selling for top dollar, cars that people might be pricing too high. Have a look at early and mid 1980s Mercedes-Benz SLs with miles over $8k on eBay. There are a lot of no sales, unrealistic Buy It Now prices, in the $9,000 – $13,000 range. People clearly have unrealistic expectations for the sale price of these cars. Something in the $7,000 to $8,000 range is all the money from my vantage point, I’d feel better about paying $5,000. So I might looking around at more local sources for such cars in that lower price range, knowing they can’t get more on the national eBay market. This market information is invaluable to anyone looking for a good deal locally. It’s very possible you’ll find a great 1985 500SL grey market car on ebay with 85,000 miles, original owner, etc. that would be well worth paying up for… just be careful when considering more common options. A better deal on a better car can usually be had closer to home if you’re patient.

The Mercedes-Benz SL market speaks... real auctions, real results

Cross country eBay purchases always carry a degree of risk with them, it’s obviously important to deal with a reputable seller with a  proven track record of positive feedback. Unless you’re looking for something really rare, and if you are, it probably doesn’t qualify as an “Affordable Classic”, there are just too many other, safer options to take a chance with a seller who doesn’t seem quite right.

A long distance purchase via eBay also involves shipping the vehicle back to your home or flying out to pick it up and driving it home… both add to the cost of the transaction. I would argue a “fly out, drive home” adds to the adventure of the purchase and the enjoyment of the car, but in the end there is money involved.

That’s what I did with my 1982 Volkswagen Westfalia. It wasn’t an eBay purchase, just a regular classified I found on the internet. A one way plane ticket to Denver from Chicago, the drive back to Chicago is a trip I won’t forget. I had a smile a mile wide the whole time, however I was prepared to walk away from the transaction and fly home if the car wasn’t what it was represented to be.

In the end I like eBay more as a research tool than a place to buy my next affordable classic car, but it really depends on what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a real cream of the crop example of something, you may have to go to the national market and pay up for it. There is real value in that if that’s what you want. If you’re looking for something a bit more common, a project, or a solid driver you might be able to do better closer to home. If you’ve got time and you’re patient, I believe you will always find what you’re looking for close to home.