The Face of Greed

[MagicRatt]

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I think what he's guilty of is commercializing the hobby we love. It's now sheik for rich guys to own a muscle car or two and guys like us are left in the dust drooling over pictures of cars we'll never own. JMHO

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I would agree with this and also add that these are the same cars that "we" gave up on and sold 20 years ago, not realizing that someday some rich and wealthy types would come along and snatch it right away. I owned my fair share of muscle cars over the last 24 years not knowing that I would see the same cars bringing in this kind of cash. Kinda gives me mixed emotions......

[Chris396]

There is nothing we can do about the prices. It's nice to know that the car in the garage could help pay for the garage in a pinch. I will say the hobby was a bit more fun when the prices were cheaper. I miss seeing the cars on the road with owners who weren't so anal and scared to drive. It's like going to see a good band in a small or medium sized club before they become really popular and the "me toos" get on the bandwagon.

[Chris396]

I'll also say that that is one reason to check the Supercar Reunion for anyone who hasn't. The cars get driven and the atmosphere is very relaxed without people worried about getting a plastic trophy. Events like this still make the hobby a lot of fun.

[GOAT72]

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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?

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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!

[mike s]

all sh*t aside barrett jackson does not have the best reputation and in my opinion in that picture craig jackson does look like a huge snake/crook

just my 2 cents mike

[GRB]

It's not always a pretty picture. But it IS the free mkt doing what it does best. Matching willing sellers and willing buyers at a price both MUST agree to. We love it when we are the seller and question it when we are the buyer. That's what makes us human.

[DaJudge]

They put on a good show. The only issue I see is that anyone who has a car that resembles one that went across the blocks at B/J and did a good number, they now believe that their car is worth the same amount. Private sellers should remember the sellers have a lot of expenses to get that 3 minutes of fame. Subtract out the shipping costs to get it there, hotel, meals etc, travel, and fees to get into the auction plus the 8% to B/J as you can see there are some real expenses that need to be subtracted out to get to your real price or profit. Your car really needs to do a moon shot to make it worth while.