JCP911S

A "collector" is a crazy person that bought Warhol prints in the 70's, and a "hoarder' is a crazy person that bought Gremlins in the 70's... but they are basically the same person that spent the same money, but made unfortunately different decisions.

GTgears

There's a hoarder in Sheridan who has made a pretty penny...

73911

While everyone in Monterey was wondering if the bubble would burst it actually did. When the equities market blew up it took your Apple stock down with it. Your Porsche RSR is doing just fine though.

You cannot look at the investment maker in isolated segments. You have to look at the various forms of investment that are available to you.

The people who pulled money from equities to buy collector cars have to feel really smart this morning.

Richard Newton
Beginner's Guide to Collecting

73911

One more observation from Monterey was that Mecum had a lot of trouble moving into the collector market. Mecum has generally sold to the hobbyist market. At Monterey he tried selling a few serious collector cars.

It didn't work out so well. Four of his big Ferraris and five of his big Porsches did not sell. A Ferrari 250TR didn't bring a single bid. If you do the math Mecum missed on roughly $21 million dollars worth of cars.

It's not just about assembling a group of cars. The auction houses also have to get people with serious money into the room. Mecum never has serious money at his auction.

Again, keep in mind that the McQueen Porsche was a big time charitable contribution (tax deduction) so that doesn't factor into the real sales.

Richard Newton

73911

The Road Scholars Magazine report on Monterey is now online.

The big news may have been the drop in quality. We saw any number of bad cars. Some of the restorations appeared to have been rushed out the door to make the auction.

While the total sales were down we don't think that was due to a correction in the market. The overall sales were below 20014 because the quality of the cars being offered was much lower than last year.

Richard Newton

SeattleE30///M3

Regarding quality. I was able to spend some time with serious 2.7 RS connoisseurs during carweek and they were appalled by quality of most of the cars up for auction.

If there is indeed a market correction, I'm interested to see what happens to the air-cooled car market.

Amber Gramps

Richard is right on. All of the sudden what were junk used cars just a couple years ago are now somehow being represented as collector quality gold by dealers that have no idea what the cars looked like originally. All the grey or rusty fasteners on the 911 used to be yellow gold in color. The Cad fades on street cars, its a dead give away.

GTgears

Yep. I've been saying all spring and summer that the market run up has flushed out the crud cars. It's not a bubble popping with a poor quality car can't command what a nice one does.

Mondrian

A 2.7 RS changed hands last September for over $1m, many insiders actually wondered if it was indeed an original RS in the first place. Would you sell an asset that was increasing in value by 20% every year when banks are giving you 0% interest and markets are nervous - only if that asset was not water tight.

lucky strike

Quality cars always bring the big money.
A redone p.o.s. will always be that.
Educated buyers know the difference

911Dave

I wonder how educated the market is in general. When non-experts start buying up these cars of questionable provenance for bigger and bigger money, and speculators just buy them for quick flipping, you have a bubble in the making.

The insane runup of prices on air cooled turbos of every vintage comes to mind. As soon as interest in these begins to wane, that bubble is going to deflate very quickly. Look what happened to the used Ferrari market after the recession of the early 90's.

Pricing of more typical cars (average to good drivers) hasn't been affected nearly as much, and won't suffer as much either when the market returns to normal. The bubble is really in the turbos and longhoods. The increase in 74-98 911s is just the knock-on effect.

Freddie Two Bs

I'm not too sure about that. You see half decent SC targas asking 30k these days, I'm being told they were $15k cars a couple years ago. I think those 3.5 condition SCs and carreras would be hit the hardest in relative terms.

911Dave

Right, so SCs and Carreras have maybe doubled in value, compared to turbos which have gone up 5x. That was my point. The higher they go, the farther they fall.

Spyerx

let the 'value' of my carrera fall 50%. I'm still doing better than any new car on the depreciation curve!

GTgears

If the value of my Carrera fell by half I would still be up...