I was out of the hobby for quite a few years because I realized I had gone down the wrong trail. I had got sucked into the show car/originality mentality and had forgotten the actual fun of having these cars is driving them... frequently! Sinking tens of thousands of dollars into a dust collector that sits in the garage in between shows is a waste. Sinking a few thousand dollars into getting a car back on the road and driving the crap out of it is a blast! I got a laugh when tpodwdog mentioned the mid-life crisis stuff about wanting to relive our youth.
Not long ago, my sister-in-law was over for dinner and her husband was checking out my car. She told my wife she hoped her husband didn't have a mid-life crisis like I did and want to get a car like that, and my wife told her that was the first car I ever owned, the second, the third, and I had been buying them as long as she's known me. She told her that any guy who buys the same make, model, and year of cars for 30 years shows a level of consistency that makes him a keeper. It's the guy who's never owned one his entire life and decides he wants his first one after age 50 that you have to worry about. ;)
As to the youth of today, I used to think the way tpodwdog does, but that was before I started using my car as a daily driver and getting to see lots of reactions from kids. Just Sunday, I stopped by a grocery store after watching the Steelers get creamed, and as I was backing out a boy, about 10 I would guess, came out with his mom. He looked at my car and he was in total awe. His mouth was literally open the whole way through the parking lot, and he was so intent on watching me back out he walked right into the side of another car. I would bet money that young man had never seen a Road Runner or many other old Plymouths in his life, and had no appreciation for our cars before then, but I sure as hell recognized the look on his face since it was the same one I had the first time I saw a 73 Road Runner back in 73. I pass a bus stop full of high school kids every morning on the way to work. When I drive past in my Interceptor, they're busy yacking, texting, and doing what kids do. On Thursdays and Fridays when I drive past in the Road Runner, most all of them stop what they're doing and watch me drive by. I've written posts before about some of the contacts I've had with young kids who have the same reaction to my car that I had at their age, so while I agree that love for these cars may not be hereditary within families, it does get passed down from generation to generation on the whole and when that kid from the parking lot grows up and has his own old Road Runner, I'm sure he'll be laughing like I did when he watches some awe-struck kid walk into another car because he's so focused on taking in his first real look at a cool classic car.
The reason why cars aren't selling at higher prices is best summed up in tpodwdog's statement "
and thats my theory as to why these cars dont sell like "we" think they should", with "
should" being the operable term. Our cars are selling, but they are not selling for prices some think they should be selling for. People need to wake up and realize that our cars have been artificially over-valued since the late 1980s! The prices in any collector hobby are driven by the forces of supply and demand, with the demand coming from collectors like most of us on this forum. Prices are set by how many cars are available
and how much
disposable income we have to put into them. What's important here is disposable income. We're not looking at these cars as investments, we're looking at them as cars. Our problem has been that since the late 1980s, our market hasn't been driven my collectors. It has been driven by investors who were looking for safe investment alternatives to items like stocks, bonds, and currencies after the stock market issues that began in 1987. These folks started snapping up these cars, which drove prices up, which drove more people to buy them as investments. Sadly, those of us who were collectors had to either pay out the *** to get what we wanted or do without.
It's no coincidence that the prices of these cars has been steadily dropping as the price of precious metals have been going up. Most of the folks who shifted their investments to classic cars for the past two decades are now shifting their money to precious metals. Precious metals don't need environmentally-controlled garages or other storage sites, don't need regular upkeep and maintenance, don't suffer from dry rot or mice, and most importantly can be bought and sold easily and cheaply without the hassles of finding a buyer who will pay top dollar for a car with a very limited appeal.
While this reality is a boon for those of us who are getting back into the hobby, it's a a serious bust for people who bought their cars when they were at the top of the mark price wise. The sad reality is these people paid prices that were set primarily by investors, using investment income, and those people have now left the market. Now the market price is being set by collectors, using disposable income, and prices are returning to where they should have been were it not for the influences of investors. Cars are no longer selling for what these people think they "should" be selling for because they became used to the inflated prices and don't like the idea that their car is now worth 20-50% of what they paid for it. And this situation isn't likely to improve. As more cars sell for lower prices, the new norm for people entering the hobby is going to be non-inflated prices and I think that's going to be a good thing for folks who love these cars. Yes, it's going to suck huge for the owners such as the ones at the auction who had their reserves set too high to protect them from a major loss, but it'll make it more affordable for the next generation of owners to enter the hobby.
I think the jump the shark moment for car prices came in 2009, when Reggie Jackson's '69 ZL-1 Camaro went on the block at Barrett's. Jackson had paid $800,000 for that car, and all the talk of the auction was the car was going to become the first million-dollar Camaro. The announcers were just hyping the crap out of that car. They were just panting for that $1,000,000 bid to be voiced, and what happens... the car barely breaks $300k! Talk about a WTF moment!
That was the moment that started a distinct change in auction announcing. Gone were the days of "this is going to set a new record!", and in were the days of "that car was well bought!" When did you ever hear "that car was well bought" before then? Not often, but you hear it all the time now.
I think we're now getting to the point where we can get back to focusing on what cars "are" selling for and not what they "should" be selling for.
