cash in hand VS cars in garage.... cars in garage always win... so here goes...year 2010.. lets say fred has a million cash in a box in his garage... and bill has a million worth of collectable cars... fast forward to 2025... fred has a million in the box,... and bill now has 2 million worth of cars.... freds million has lost 50% of buying power... and would have to double the million to buy bills cars... now, even though bill now has 2 million worth of cars... he didn't make a dime because now the cars cost 2 million to buy...but he did stay even...
TRUE STORY.... So my oldest son calls me..."Dad, I found this 55 chevy for sell and was thinking I should buy it, and wanted to see what you think... I answered NO!!! he says " I didn't even tell you about it, and you say NO!! that's right the answer is no... " why you being a **** he says... just try'n to help you I said... "you could help by telling me why you keep say'n NO!!! So I say Son, lets ay you are walking down the street and see a hundred dollar bill laying on the sidewalk,...would you call me to ask if you should pick it up... he replyed, thats differant... a hundered dollar bill Is worth a hundred bucks... I would just pick it up... exactly, through the years , you learned what a dollar is, and what it's worth...before you invest in a car.... YOU need to study the market and YOU need to know what it's worth before you buy it... buying a car cause someone says what it's worth is a gamble... not a purchase..... needless to say.... he has never asked me if he should buy anything again... he does real good with flipping late model trucks.... and stays away from cl***ic stuff....
doubling your money every 7 years... you would have made 865k off each 4300 investment.... not including any inflation etc....
For all this ^^ to make sense, a person watching a TV show or use any auction results as a reference to generalized “values” would have to blindly believe every sale in them are real and an actual transaction between legitimate buyer & seller had taken place. How many sales of "1965 Z-16 Chevelles" have you or anyone here personally witnessed, let alone any in close to 1/4 million dollar range ? P.S. In past 40+ years I have personally been involved with and/or witnessed several "world record price" sales of some vintage cars and know they are very, very rare occasions and every time someone asks my opinion on "investment potential" or "value" of some specific makes or models, I can't help but not take them seriously as a true car enthusiast.
I have never, ever, in my life thought of a car as an "investment". Maybe that's part of my problem.....
I have made a few bucks on cars when I sell them I have also lost money, hot rods were never meant to be investments, Invest in Gold if you want to make money, invest in hot rods if you wanna have fun. HRP
From about 2000 to 2012 I was doing great building 32 highboy roadsters and selling them. Then the election happened and it seemed like the major players zipped their pocket books shut. Today I can either die with my cars or give them away.
In 1975 I bought a new Cosworth Vega, very low production number. Only made roughly 1500 of them, hand ***embled engines with a tag of the name of the guy who ***embled it. Sounds like a candidate for collectable , right? WRONG!! I kept that ******* for like 10 years and put 200 miles on it, kept it in storage all that time, when I went to sell it I made like $1000.00 on it and it took forever to sell it. The last time I ever did that, now I drive the *** off anything I own, knowing full well I'll probably lose money on it.but at least I had my fun with it.
I've been playing with cars all my life and will say the only car type that was a terrible investment was my racing p***ion, I owned, raced Midgets and wing Sprint cars for 21 years. I thank my Dad for this p***ion/addiction as he was a Midget race car owner from 1948 till his p***ing in 1987. I left the racing deal at the end of 1991 and came back to hot rods, 29 Highboy roadster, 32 Ford full fender 3 window, a mild custom 51 Merc, now old, have 3 OT hobby cars and have never made any money, but never lost any on the hobby cars. Compared to racing Anything/Everything I have done seems So reasonable, that's the takeaway from racing. To repeat myself, Memories Priceless ! The car hobby has served me well all my life and I'm still participating in shows and cruises.
I keep investing in my cars...yeh..it is kind of an investment I guess and beats walking as an investment
My cars and motorcycles are not investments, they are therapy. In either instance, neither is working.
Trying to make money with old cars is only slightly less risky than buying lottery tickets or going to Vegas. It can be done, but don't count on it for paying the mortgage.
Well some of you knew I'd stop in for a coffee. Cream n sugar please... The right car, today, not some time machine fantasy, will always be a good hedge against inflation. The safety factor is liquidity which is what I mean by a right car. Aunt Millie's 38 Plymouth 4dr isn't the right car. I won't bore everyone to tears with what I call right cars and I'd guess most know already. Something desirable will always be a tangible ***et. Some ins***utions actually factor and finance our stuff these days and that alone should speak volumes. In order to make money on this stuff you have to join the ranks of the HAMB most hated club. The guys who toil and dig and network and invest their time and cash into bringing things to market. Most hated because we expect to be paid for our efforts, but how dare we get paid for the personal desires of a "hobby" when we should be getting 5 singles for a 5 dollar bill because "labor of love". I won't pick that scab any further, that's a winter topic after the big auctions. It's all what we're comfy doing. I'm not sure I could let 6 figures rest in a high end CCCA cl***ic but I've seldom to never seen one lose money unless that seller actually lost the big **** contest at auction and grossly over paid. But even really good stuff is no guarantee of a good selling experience. Had the 60 Starliner for way too long. What happened? EXACTLY what I said, the 1st person who showed up to see the car took it with all the zeal I promised it would cause. Sadly it took 15 months but nonetheless it sold. Yes indeed it was a good "investment" and I actually wanted it on the road and a longer term of ownership. A non-monetary dividend. My 39 would take a serious medical emergency to pry from my fingers. It's also not in the upper echelon of right cars, but it is for me. My benefit is that when it's done it's mine and done and checks all my boxes. It's not valuable enough worry about the cash I have in it so there's that too. Will it "make" money if sold? Sure but nowhere near enough to make me sell it. That's the best investment of all. You're there, elbow out the window, shades on, cruising at a nice cozy speed to hang with a buncha other brain damaged hoodlums who love this ****. Priceless. Can I get one to go please? Yeah, cream n sugar...
First off, no I didn’t read any of the comments. I’m being lazy. It was just the ***le that caught my eye today. And it reminded me of the adage, how do you make a small fortune in racing? Start with a large fortune! That would be my problem, I’d buy high and sell low…
hi Folks, Well, like most of the discussions on the HAMB, this topic has as many opinions as it does belly ****ons. To each his own I suppose , as we all have different cir***stances that motivate us I have always held the opinion that if you are in this hobby to make money, you are in it for the wrong reasons. ..my advice to anyone who would be willing to listen has always been, "when your time on this good earth is winding down which do you wish you had more of ..TIME or MONEY."
In 1987, I bought a very nice original 1967 Corvette coupe (327/350, 4 speed) with 65,000 believable miles and mostly matching numbers for $12,500. I drove it a moderate amount (500 miles a year) until 2008, when I decided to restore it, to the tune of $60,000. Over the years, I had corrected all the non-matching numbers items, so by 2010, I had a freshly restored matching numbers Corvette with 77,000 miles. I have driven it even less since than, but have managed to knock the luster of a fresh restoration off it. Today, it's probably worth $85,000. So, over the time I've owned it, I've actually doubled my money. Smart eh? Not really, compared to the many other things I could have done with that $12,500 in 1987. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat, but not as an investment.
Let's do the math another way. If you put the same $43,000 into the S&P 500 in 1965 and let it sit until today, that $43,000 would have made you $16.8 million. Without worrying about storage or garage dings, mice, bad gas, etc. Now, $43K in '65 was a ton of cash, so that may not of been feasible, but I"m just using the original figure. You can do the calculation for a lesser amount, let's say $4,500. That would return $1.5+ million dollars today. That said, I love cars as much as the next guy, but I really don't think cars, in general, should be deemed an investment. If you get lucky and hit on one model that you've kept and it made you a hefty profit, awesome. I just don't think that is the norm. Look at the prices of early Fords. A few years back, it would be hard to believe that guys can't unload '32 roadsters. If you are interested in trying your hand at it, every year Hagerty does a "bull market" list of cars that they believe have some fiscal upside. Then they follow it up every so often to see if they were right. Most times they are. They have the benefit of seeing the car market through the lens of an insurer and other means, so they are dealing with a little "insider" trading.
"Investment" takes many forms. A cpl guys found and old _________ and were the right guys with the right amount of money. They put about $20k in it and verified everything they could. In 14 months their net profit was just a whisk under $170k. Yes @DDDenny they flipped it Who sez cars are bad investments? Like I said, the right car. Note I didn't say who it was or what the car was. No, I'm not telling. Ya got a better chance of buying my 39
This discussion is on another site as well, "Recovering the cost of restoration" or something like that. Once you start pouring money into a car, getting it back is going to be a hard battle. Buy any HAMB friendly car, (a car not a pile of parts) Buy new tires, repaint the wheels and get it running & stopping. Keep track of every penny spent and your time. Now advertise it for sale and add $250.00 to the total invested. How many months will it take to get your money back, and the $250.00 profit?
I have a buddy with a pole barn full of beautiful cars. I asked him how he affords them all and he said "I buy high, sell low, and make it up in quan***y".
old junk cars are a good investment if you have the time and energy to part them out... by the way, time is not money, other people's time is money. your own time is free. I get 24 hours every day and it costs me nothing. parted a 60 El Camino, and 51 and 53 Chevrolets in 1995 ish. made about $9,000.00 total. today I would quadruple that amount if not more as prices are nuts now, even though the buy in price would be more.
I've had about 25 - 30 cars, from drivers to junk. I bet I have just about broken even over the last 45 years, plus I still have my 61 Dodge that is worth much more than I paid for it 30 years ago. my 49 Chevrolet same thing though I have spent money on that one.
Well you know I'd have an outlook on restoration recovery. If it's only dollars, no. It's a rare thing to pile cash into a nut n bolt restoration. So what do you get for that? YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE. You don't discover 6 mo down the road the car was a cave n pave, or some jadrool listened to an urban legend and did some trick modification or "upgrade" that doesn't work and leaves you stranded. Totally off topic car for comparison. Late model Bentley conv. They're what, $275k? A few years and low miles later they're hammering at Me*** or B-J for $80K. So, you have that much in a Packard Roadster. Let's pick a 33-34 Super 8, not even a 12. You did it 5-10 years ago, had your fun, won shows, it's peer reviewed, it rolls across and hammers $235-250K it cost you NOTHING. You owned it, enjoyed it, had it judged, everything a collector or special car does. The difference if there's any at all (sometimes you get more) was the price of that experience over the period of ownership. Now if you plowed $80K into a perfect restoration of Aunt Millie's 38 Plymouth 4dr...oops. Why? Better make it a family heirloom and never sell. I'm sure I don't make sense to many of my beloved HAMB family and that's just as good. Most people find it hard to remove themselves from any topic. But I'll go on record to say if it wasn't for flipping and hustling I wouldn't have anything at all. But I also know that life isn't for everyone, hell sometimes I wonder it's for me
What did it cost the owner of that Super 8 to have a nut & bolt restoration done? Add cost of purchase to that. I've been reading how a Pebble Beach level paint (including prep, materials, product) can approach the $50-75K or more mark. I get how cars can be an emotional thing for folks. I think we just need to be logical when saying something (X-item, Y-item) is an investment. All investments have some level of risk.
I was 14 in 1965, so I was lucky if I had $43, let alone $43000 in my pocket. In fact, I got married at 21, still a broke college student. My wife laughed when I gave her my savings account book that showed a balance of $5.84. I told her to not spend it all in one place. It wasn’t until I was 25, and bought our first house, for $43000 that I dreamed of having that much money. The caveat was that house came with a thirty year mortgage of $30000 or so. I always had one or more hobby cars, some of which would be worth something today. A Boss 302 and 55 BelAir come to mind. There’s probably a half dozen or more that I should have kept, but secure, and protected, affordable storage was always an issue until the last twenty or so years. No regrets at this point, all things considered.
your own labor is free. I could have kept tabs on the time I put in, and that would give me how much I made per hour, but the profit would not be any less. you could account for expendables. I used many cut off wheels and gas for my torch, but it was not that much. profit is money spent and a return on that money.
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