I almost forgot about that post. At the time I made that post, those were the prices I was seeing while shopping for my FJ40. But where I am located is probably on the high end of the price spectrum due to competition. Looking back at the prices I had listed, I wish I had bought every single land cruiser I looked at and just stored it in a garage. $15K for a showroom quality FJ40 seems like a steal now. I wish I had spent the money up front and purchased something already restored, instead of buying something cheap and trying to fix it up. But at the time $15K might as well have been $100K to me, it just seemed so far out of reach. It's ironic that I'm probably getting close to having that much invested now and it still looks like crap.
I'd say prices have more than doubled since then. Back then I bought a solid driveable FJ40 for about $5k that required minor work to make it a daily driver, and now I'm seeing some in similar or worse condition to what I bought mine for going for $10-15K. Gone are the days of a sub $1k cruiser, even for a rusted out parts vehicle with no title. Right after getting my FJ40, I also thought about getting an FJ55 just to have a sibling vehicle, and I remember seeing one for sale in average condition for $3k and thinking it was overpriced.
The only bad thing about the rising prices is the cost of parts has gone up dramatically. 15 years ago I purchased a near mint condition hardtop with sides for $400, that same hardtop today would be north of $2k. Even though my original intent was to build it up as an off-road vehicle, when I think of the repair or replacement cost of some of the parts I am hesitant to push it too hard off road.
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