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good post
Price gougers study
- Thread starter Skatpak
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good post
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Thank you
4406bbl
Well-Known Member
Some of the issue is that if you bought parts for $1000 in 1980 that money would be worth $3700 now. Maybe buyers should take that into account on desirable parts, not to mention storage over 40 years. We had Mopar making/warehouseing lot of these parts, some of it very cheap back then that is over and now you pay to play.
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I understand your point. The rarity and
availability of the part will, over time,
always become more expensive due
it's scarcity unless it's produced non
OEM. Then it becomes the game as to
who offers that part at the bottom line.
Those that remain to a true restoration
will always lean towards the OEM
parts, hence tend to pay a higher price
for those parts.
Hot rod, restomod, rat rod, original,
dragster.
The choice is the builders, and each
have associated costs.
I prefer the hotrod realm.
padam
Well-Known Member
What about all the great vendors we have here on fbbo?
I have used some of them and enjoyed the products or services.
But guess what. I didn’t get it for free. And I will be bold enough to say the vendor most likely made a profit.
It’s also likely that many vendors here make a profit, but don’t actually make the product, but just buy the product from someone else, perhaps repackaged, and sell it at a profit.
What’s the problem with a private person doing the same thing? How does it benefit the hobby if those rusty parts are left to rust into the ground or melted down for scrap?
Try going to the race track and telling them it would benefit the hobby if they let you race for free.
Grow up people. Fairness is a concept for children.
I have used some of them and enjoyed the products or services.
But guess what. I didn’t get it for free. And I will be bold enough to say the vendor most likely made a profit.
It’s also likely that many vendors here make a profit, but don’t actually make the product, but just buy the product from someone else, perhaps repackaged, and sell it at a profit.
What’s the problem with a private person doing the same thing? How does it benefit the hobby if those rusty parts are left to rust into the ground or melted down for scrap?
Try going to the race track and telling them it would benefit the hobby if they let you race for free.
Grow up people. Fairness is a concept for children.
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This is where due diligence comes into
play. You either choose the route of
convenience (usually higher price) or
spend hours on the net looking for the
best deal you can find.
I've spent close to thirty 30 years on
my current build, and have kicked
myself in the *** when it's found
that the part I found last week
fit the bill, and this week's part beat
last week's part by 10% or more.
I can honestly tell you that in the
overall picture of things, the ultimate
goal is to get my build on the road,
listening to some Credence with my
wife of 48 years sitting by my side,
listening also to that unmistakable
rumble of a 440. At that point, what
I spent to get it there fades off in
the distance.
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“Fairness is a concept for children. That’s just sad.
Spare Parts
Well-Known Member
Low ballers are a big part of the
problem also.
I will always remember being at a baseball card convention in the 80s.
A customer pulled a neatly plastic packaged card and asked how much?
Vendor— 50 cents.
Customer— would you take 25 cents?
Vendor— Let me look at card.
Vendor tears card in half and hands it back to customer. You can have it for FREE!!!!
problem also.
I will always remember being at a baseball card convention in the 80s.
A customer pulled a neatly plastic packaged card and asked how much?
Vendor— 50 cents.
Customer— would you take 25 cents?
Vendor— Let me look at card.
Vendor tears card in half and hands it back to customer. You can have it for FREE!!!!
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padam
Well-Known Member
I agree, it is sad to have to grow up and face the world as it is, instead of how we want it to be.
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I love my car more than any other I’ve owned. But I’m not stupid. My wife has the guy’s contact info, and it would be sold tomorrow if my circumstances changed.
padam
Well-Known Member
How do you mean?
Live by your own standards? That means make your own rules. The exact opposite of fairness.
I can’t tell you the last time I just opened a catalog and bought a part at full retail. If I need a part for a hobby car, it’s because I know that the job is coming up and I have time to find it through my network of friends, parts sellers, and other such avenues. I sell parts, a lot less now than in the past, because of the shipping mostly. I have a very large honey hole to clean out, and of course the owners want almost full retail, but they also know they I’m their only buyer. I can strike a balance because I don’t need any of it. And don’t forget, is little guys are putting out money out of our pocket, taking time out of our lives to get the parts, clean them up, list them or go from swap meet to swap meet and try to sell them so buyer and seller are both happy. It’s all part of the hobby for me. Sometimes my wife will ask why I’m helping people out, and my answer is simple…..it’s all part of the hobby.
Here’s a recent purchase I made from the honey hole. I paid $1800 for these grilles, sold them all and made a profit of about $1k, and every single person who bought one was over the moon because the price they paid was more than fair. I made money, they got their parts, they were nice parts, and everybody was happy. It took me almost a year to sell them all, so my $1800 was tied up for quite awhile. Another factor not considered in some of these posts.
Here’s a recent purchase I made from the honey hole. I paid $1800 for these grilles, sold them all and made a profit of about $1k, and every single person who bought one was over the moon because the price they paid was more than fair. I made money, they got their parts, they were nice parts, and everybody was happy. It took me almost a year to sell them all, so my $1800 was tied up for quite awhile. Another factor not considered in some of these posts.
Word play getting old.
The seller's price is the asking price. If you don't like their price, then try to negotiate a mutually agreeable lower price.
Unreasonable sellers will likely have the parts for a long time.
Unreasonable potential buyers go home whining/crying and empty-handed.
______________________________________
The real gougers: Car manufacturers and especially their dealerships.
______________________________________
I'm thinking of a Rolling Stones song.
Unreasonable sellers will likely have the parts for a long time.
Unreasonable potential buyers go home whining/crying and empty-handed.
______________________________________
The real gougers: Car manufacturers and especially their dealerships.
______________________________________
I'm thinking of a Rolling Stones song.
I have found that for the most part I have been able to find most of the parts I need for what I am willing to pay for them. That said, parts have tripled or more in their asking prices in the last five years. I have over twenty of these cars and have been buying up the parts to build them for years. I am planning on retiring in the next couple years and once I am on a fixed income buying expensive car parts is not really going to be an option, so I am trying to round up most of what I need while I am still earning my income at work. I realize that I have to downsize my collection and this is where having more than one of the same kind of car is going to pay off as parts I have slated for one car can be shifted to another. Although the countdown to retirement clock is ticking,I have accepted that I have to pay more for parts these days, but I refuse to be gouged, and will wait for a better deal. I may die without it,but they will die with it!
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Detective D
Well-Known Member
Your answer to the topic at hand boils down to "everybody does it, why not me too"
The answer to "why not me too" is the alignment of your morality and how you view your neighbors and fellow man in general.
The entire point of this thread is that the "why not me too" crowd has vastly outnumbered the rest of society that tries to do honest work, lives honestly, and treats strangers with respect. Because of this, the expectation of "do unto others" and reciprocation of respect is gone, replaced with an expectation that everyone is out to screw you.
It makes people ill. It is the way third world countries and communist countries function. America only had that type of activity in mega-urban areas and in small numbers until the last 2 decades, where it had basically exploded into the majority.
25 years ago my Ma could leave her purse in an unlocked car.
Now people break windows to steal some change and a CD out of the console. I am talking about super rural town of 3k people here.
It is all related. Everyone is out for themselves. Depending on where you lived your life until this point, watching society decay to this point is gut wrenching. I fear for my children's future, that they have to either throw out the moral code I gave them to survive or get trampled on their whole life because so many are too weak to stay the path and do what is right.
Yes, it is WEAK. It is the "easy way" it is the shortcut. No shortcuts exist that don't step on your neighbors.
It will be the undoing of our country in time.
padam
Well-Known Member
You may want to educate yourself a little, maybe look up the definition of communism.
Nothing benefits society more than a healthy self interest.
Detective D
Well-Known Member
No one is going to look at your story and think "price gouger". You sold them for a few bucks more(each) and had to handle transport and storage. If you were gouging people they would not have been happy.
Gouging would be you bought them for $1800 and then sold each one for $600, just because you could because nobody else had one. You knew what you had into them, you sat on them for a while, then sold them for a bit over what you paid. Did you have to remove them from the vehicles?
No one is upset when people upcharge a smidge for doing the work to find the parts, remove them, or act as a finders fee of sorts. People haul rust free truck parts from down south up to the rust belt all the time. They sell for more then they have into buying them and hauling them. No one cares, that person had to do all the leg work.
People get upset when jobless grifters snipe up a part that was being sold at a fair price and then quadruple the price because of market conditions.
There is this phenomenon in collectible markets, the easiest example is baseball cards or similar. When something gets "hot" all the grifters come out of the woodwork to corner the market and artificially inflate the price. See, it isn't always a collector buying the end result item at a 1000% mark up, it might be another grifter playing "the game" hoping to push the market higher, or keep it there because he has a half dozen he is sitting on he wants to unload and can't afford to let the market drop again. So then you get ebay sellers with crazy prices that set the tone of the market. Ebay has cleverly hidden away the results of actual completed auctions(you can find them) to see what the real selling price averages out to be, because it ruins "the game" when people notice items are being sniped off the market and relisted at gouge prices. Eventually people do catch on, and the grift collapses, sometimes. Many times, the pricepoint is moved and never returns. All because a bunch of jobless grifters were greedy and had the time.
it isn't just supply and demand, and hasn't been for a few years now. "flipping" has turned into a career, and it is glorified on the internet and made legitimate through internet commerce companies that get to collect higher fees when it works in their favor.
Meanwhile, the actual collector or in our case "car guy" gets to watch the cost of their dream soar into the sky, to never return sometimes or at best come back down to earth a couple years later when the grift collapses. That is the crux of the complaint. The behavior has exploded, it is in all aspects of our lives now.
Your story still happens. It is in the decline. It will become the exception very soon. Did you follow up with your buyers? Did they all actually need the part or did one of them go post it on fleabay for $700? I know once it leaves it isn't you concern, just pointing out what happens more and more often when people sell stuff at a fair price.
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The fact that this is a hobby for most of us, but a business for some others creates a situation where normal market forces don't always apply. Especially in the area of unique trim pieces for anyone trying to keep a B body factory original, the existence of a "thin market," with rare parts, and just as rare buyers, often distorts pricing. Sentiment and emotion also factor in, creating a different market than a strictly profit oriented business environment.
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