The Face of Greed

[427TJ]

Greed? No one forces someone to sell their car at B-J. Craig Jackson's rules are up front for all to read beforehand. If you don't like his terms then sell it elsewhere. The greed is on both sides if you want to use that term. Greedy sellers want to cash-in for the max amount on their cars and Craig Jackson is their 'enabler.' If you had to haggle the price of a car you were selling in your driveway you probably wouldn't get as much for it as you could at B-J. I guarantee you that not one seller will ever tell a buyer: "You know what? 150,000 is just too much for this car so I'm going to let you have it for 100,000." C'mon guys! Craig Jackson is a business man just like millions of others. I think what's at play here is the emotion we all invest in our "hobby." Bidders yell out with all their emotion if they want a car bad enough. Don't agree? Look at Ferrari Guy bidding on the 3-million '54 Olds concept car. He was crying after the hammer dropped! So, that same emotion trickles down to the lowly TV viewers (like most of us) who will never be able to drop 155K on a '67 435 Corvette. It irks us that we can't just go out and buy one for what we think it should be worth.

There isn't one person on this forum who wouldn't hold out for as much as they could get for their car, especially at a place like B-J. In one breath we lament escalating prices, an in the next breath we expect to get similar money for our own car when we sell it. Craig Jackson isn't in this to be nice, he's in it to make money and he doesn't hide that. Don't like it? Don't play.

[Jeff H]

I think they said there were around 900 cars willing to sell at no reserve and 400 cars people wanted to sell with a reserve. They(BJ) chose to only allow the 900 cars with no reserve in the auction. So that's where the greed part comes in. I wonder how many sellers had to buy back their own car and pay the 16% commission on top of it. But it sure seems like it's more bogus cars, clones and street rods vs real documented musclecars.

[427TJ]

[ QUOTE ]
I think they said there were around 900 cars willing to sell at no reserve and 400 cars people wanted to sell with a reserve. They(BJ) chose to only allow the 900 cars with no reserve in the auction. So that's where the greed part comes in.

[/ QUOTE ]

Perhaps, but it's still Craig Jackson's show and if he wants to put on a good show then cars must sell. Yeah, it'd be nice to "troll" a car at B-J with no intention of selling just to see what it might be worth, but again, Craig Jackson isn't in this for trollers, he's in it to make a buck. Refusing the Reserve cars is his way of separating the wheat from the chaff and he doesn't hide that fact. As a pure business venture I don't blame him one bit.

Morality? Well yes, you could morally attack Craig Jackson all day long for wanting to make money but who among us doesn't like to make money? If you want to get on a moral high-horse then offer to work for free during the month of February. Your boss would jump on that deal, wouldn't he? Good business people aren't in the morals business and that's why the term "business ethics" usually results in snickers and replies of "yeah, right" from the crowd. If Craig Jackson did charity work he'd go broke.

It's a damn shame that I can't go out and buy the muscle car of my dreams for $5,000, but I sure as hell wouldn't sell that same car for any less than the maximum amount that I could get for it. Life is just unfair.

Is this horse dead yet?

[budnate]

.........

[Motion Camaro]

[ QUOTE ]
.........

[/ QUOTE ]
--- ---- ---- ----

[GOAT72]

[ QUOTE ]

It's a damn shame that I can't go out and buy the muscle car of my dreams for $5,000, but I sure as hell wouldn't sell that same car for any less than the maximum amount that I could get for it. Life is just unfair.

Is this horse dead yet?

[/ QUOTE ]

Bill,
When you're selling a car do you charge $350 per viewer to LOOK at it? Do you make others stand 150 ft. back and pay $100 to LOOK at it?
Do you have trained monkeys in the crowd who have been taught how to say the right things to increase your buyers' enthusiasm and heighten the emotion around the sale of your car?
Do you put it on a stage with bright lights and celebs in order to DRIVE the bids to an unbelievably inflated price?

Do you have a bunch of cheerleaders, including "Satan of the Car Hobby," screaming for the potential buyers to up their bids?

It's a bunch of smoke and mirrors, it's destroying our hobby and NO, the horse has not been beat to death because there are guys who refuse to believe it's "OK" to get as much as you can for a car.

This is why MOST of us have "asking prices." We try to sell our cars at fair market value.

How do we NORMALLY treat scheisters on eBay who try to sell cars at inflated value?
We make fun of them and call them crooks.
Or don't we?

Did you see the Dec. '04 issue of Hot Rod Magazine? (On Page 20 under "Royally Ripped Off".)
A guy in Omaha paid an elderly woman $200 for her '31 Ford, an Evinrude outboard and a Hiawatha Bike.
The guy had gloated over his windfall deal, but the reader's took issue with him and the fact that he took advantage of an 80+ yr old woman. They encouraged him to go back and give her a fair payment for her items!

Sure, this hobby is about our cars, but it's also about respect for one another. I have never been to any car shows or meets where the classic cars guys weren't simply the nicest, fairest people around.

So, isn't paying too little and being duped into paying too much EQUALLY as wrong? Isn't "honesty" a part of what we all desire in our hobby?

How do you think our hobby will look in 10 years if a bunch of snooty, self-indulgent, over-bearing, swingin' dicks - who've never turned a wrench in their entire lives - start trailer-queening their cars into our meetings?

It will become more and more presumptuous and cold... and I, for one, will protest this until the day I die.

This is a hobby of "good guys."
Not for a bunch of overpaid stockbrokers who will look down their noses at us as they take all their plastic trophies home.
(No offends to stockbrokers here, just an example!)

Again, though... this is ONLY my opinion!



Mac
..waiting to be slapped...

[427TJ]

[ QUOTE ]
When you're selling a car do you charge $350 per viewer to LOOK at it? Do you make others stand 150 ft. back and pay $100 to LOOK at it?
Do you have trained monkeys in the crowd who have been taught how to say the right things to increase your buyers' enthusiasm and heighten the emotion around the sale of your car?
Do you put it on a stage with bright lights and celebs in order to DRIVE the bids to an unbelievably inflated price?

Do you have a bunch of cheerleaders, including "Satan of the Car Hobby," screaming for the potential buyers to up their bids?

[/ QUOTE ]

Mac, I think you're missing my point. Craig Jackson isn't making anyone play by his rules against their will . Again, if a seller didn't like the way the B-J is run then it's up to the seller not to participate. Think of the radio dial: If you don't like what's on then select another station. Can't find anything worth listening to? Switch it off. It's your choice whether you sit and listen or not.

I'm not necessarily defending B-J rules here. Yeah, I can see why some guys don't like Craig Jackson's auction hysterics for helping make our beloved cars unaffordable to us but all he's doing is taking advantage of normal market forces and then adding a little showmanship. High prices for muscle cars were unavoidable and Craig Jackson is merely the smart businessman who saw it coming and started the auction craze.

The Super Bowl is next weekend and one team is gonna' win and the other team is gonna' lose. Place your bets wisely!

[Belair62]

Mac...people go to get the most $$$ for their car...it's a spectacle...much like going to Disneyworld etc....other than a few crazy things, a lot of cars were sold for what we would consider market value IMO...today was a pretty cool day to watch...less hubbubb and just regularish people buying cars for a decent price...the 58 convert was beautiful...100k...a lot of the cars that sold could not be duplicated if you went to restore one yourself...I'm glad I got my good stuff a few years ago...you can still buy beautiful Chevelles,GTO's,Road Runners,GTX's and that stuff for reasonable money...the very rarest and top HP cars are expensive but the last time I looked out in the yard...they weren't growing on trees !!!

[Jeff H]

Wrong, BJ is making people play by their rules. 900 cars with no reserve and 400 cars with a reserve. They chose not to offer the 400 cars on the auction block with a reserve. And now that quite a few people got hit pretty bad by listing with no reserve I think next year more people won't be willing to take that risk. It will turn into an auction of clones and fakes selling for $100K plus. I think most people here probably wouldn't list their car at BJ with no reserve when they could sell it for the same amount by word of mouth and not pay the fees. It's a business plain and simple. We try to figure out what the market is doing and it appears BJ is making it more cloudy. But what should we care, we still have our cars!