i wonder how hard it is to artificially inflate a price on BAT
First off, I can assure this wasn’t phony. The cashiers check for $66.5k arrived yesterday morning via UPS Saturday delivery and the vehicle ships out this week. I’ll post a picture of it being loaded into the truck. As a guy with a garage of 90’s era German cars and classic Datsun’s, I had nothing to gain by inflating a number. I only had one thing in mind...represent the vehicle to the best of my ability and let the auction run it’s course.
That said, any auction is easy to run up BUT the beauty of bringatrailer is that your credit card is held for the 5% buyers fee the moment you put in any bid....even if it’s a $10k nonsense, no chance, bid on a $200k Ferrari. (it gets lifted when someone outbids you). At the moment the auction ends, BaT processes the charge so shill bidders who get caught as high bidder pay 5%. $3325 in this case...and BaT flat out doesn’t give this money back. I’m sure it happens, but that’s a lot of money to be out and then your still stuck with the vehicle and everyone can see you still own it when you try to sale it elsewhere...which erodes trust, and indirectly devalues the vehicle. I certainly wouldn’t buy a car from someone who plays games like that. It’s why I haven’t been on eBay motors in years...it’s the Wild West over there.
Sure there are others ways like striking a backroom deal and then run it up with the true transaction price agreed upon earlier. I guess it’s probably done, as people pull all sorts of stunts. But with truly good, market setting vehicles, why would you sell it before the auction ends? That’s why you go to auction.
Of particular note to this auction, the eventual winner of the vehicle actually contacted me via Instagram to try to purchase it when he saw my teaser posts a few days before the auction even went live. I declined to even discuss a price or even listen to an offer and he totally respected that. We ended up building a good rapport throughout the week, which also helped his confidence and the bids reflected it. I didn’t give a number to him because I didn’t want any expectation of cost put out there, as I hoped it was a market topper. Truth told if I would’ve given him an “ok, you can have it if you give me this” number, it would’ve been less than the eventual sell price. Our pre auction hopes were $55-57k on the high end and the reserve was $42k for what it’s worth. Why the low reserve? Well BaT tells you what they will give you if you want to list the vehicle with them, then it’s a negotiation from there. The owner was fully committed to selling, it was the right time in his life and he bought it 15yrs ago so it’s not like he needed a certain price out of it (I won’t tell you what he paid
). As the week went on I did become optimistic for more as the comments and reactions were so positive but I still can hardly believe the final result to be honest. It was a lot of hard work to present the vehicle in such detail but the vehicle deserved extra effort and thought.
Anyway, I’m not actually sure if the initial question was a veiled accusation or not but this wasn’t meant as a defensive rant, hopefully it wasn’t read that way. Just generally, and specifically answering your question, as well as giving a bit more info on the auction.
All the best to everyone. Enjoy your 60’s and 62’s safely.
. Damn I wanted that thing.
