[Amc-list] Frustration

[Archimedes <Freedom@xxxxxxxx>]

So I get this phone call from a fellow who runs a towing service about an 
old car he picked up that day and wants to sell.

"I'll let you have it for $300", he says; but I have to buy it right now, 
because tomorrow morning, he's going to take the car to the local metal 
recycler, where he says they'll pay him about $100 for it.

I propose that he drop it off at my place for the $100 instead.  A better 
deal for him because he won't have to wait in a line to do so -- he can 
just drop it and go.

No sale.

I told him in advance what models I like, and this wasn't one of them.  He 
called me anyway.  I don't really want the car.  It has the right name on 
the manufacturer plate, but the model isn't one I'm interested in.  If I 
took it, it would be yet another of my long list of "in service to the 
hobby" gaffes.  I'd be waiting forever to get my money back out of it.  So 
he tries to talk it up telling me how much I'll profit from paying him $300 
for it.

The car is now in small shards.

Yet the guy bills himself as a "hobbyist".

I told him to take me off his call list if he's going to expect me to give 
him $300 for a $100 car.

The call had me thinking about other sellers in the hobby.  I just finished 
looking over the "completed" AMC car auctions on eBay.  55 didn't sell; 35 
did.  In looking over the "did not sell" auctions, most of the high bids 
really should have bought the car.

So the question is "what in the heck do these guys think they have?  Gold 
on wheels?"

There's a mid-seventies Gremlin someone was selling that got bid up to 
$5k.  Five thousand.  For a Gremlin with a six.  The car was far from 
perfect; the engine compartment especially needed atention, because it was 
not detailed properly at all.  It didn't sell, and the same guy admits he 
had run an autction for it the previous week and it didn't sell then, either.

Is this all just Barrett-Jacksonism?  Everyone thinks their rust bucket is 
worth $100,000 just because it's older than their son or daughter.

Just whining, don't mind me.

-- Marc

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