Bring Your Wallet

Bring a Trailer auctions are officially out of control.  There are absolutely no deals to be had there.  Making matters worse, the cars selling for beyond top dollar prices aren’t the super rare, condition 1 cars you would expect.  Has the world gone mad?  Has the value of the dollar tanked?  Are values skyrocketing?  I'm scratching my head trying to figure it all out.

Recently, a 1992 Volkswagen GTI with 53,000 miles sold for $87,000 on Bring a Trailer.  It’s a stunning example and beautifully presented, but is it really worth nearly $90,000?!  You'll have a hard time convincing me, especially when almost the exact car sold for almost half the price less than a year ago.  

Bring a Trailer started as a humble, blog-like site that highlighted enthusiast cars for sale all over the internet.  Listings from eBay, Craigslist, and even specialist sites were featured.  Readers submitted listings, writers wrote up why a certain listing was interesting, and readers commented.  It was a fantastic community, and I was dedicated to reading it every day.

Then Bring a Trailer shifted gears and became an auction site.  Cars were submitted to the site, approved, and listings were written by auction writers.  Bring a Trailer auctions typically last for a week.  If a car meets its reserve price, Bring a Trailer collects their fees and connects the buyer and seller to finalize the transaction.  Today, it’s not uncommon for 500-600 auctions to be running simultaneously.  I wouldn't be shocked if Bring a Trailer sells more collector cars in a month than all in person collector car auctions sell in a year...combined.

For both buyers and sellers, Bring a Trailer's platform can be extremely convenient.  Even reassuring!  Users chime in about cars offered for sale, offering their perspective on seemingly everything.  This is a double edged sword of course, but seems to work out in everyone's favor since Bring a Trailer moderates some of the banter.  (Though poorly informed commenters abound. Unmoderated.)  Bring a Trailer offers other services as well, like shipping and photography services.  A well presented car, with hundreds of photos of every angle, with reassuring comments from dozens of users can put a nervous buyer at ease.  After-all, it wasn't long ago that buying a car was an in-person only affair.  Now the collector car of your dreams is literally only a few clicks away.  

But in a world where you can buy a 1968 Porsche 911t Targa, that will likely never ever see the road again for $6,800, something is wrong.  Very wrong.  

I've bought and sold more than my fair share of cars.  I watched my father do it for decades.  The first thing he told me was to never buy a "famous" car.  If everyone knows what you own it for, you'll always get the short end of the financial stick.  With VIN's a Google search away, and Bring a Trailer clearly listing a returning cars previous sale price, perhaps it won't be long before buyers come to their senses.