My brother lives in souther california and is interested in buying an old car. He will send me links to cars that he is interested in and i give my feedback. It seems like the cars are kind of high priced. Like the last one was a '50 buick 4 door on craigslist with no real improvements to speak of. it ran and drove and had a bad looking 4 year old paint job for $5000. I thought it was high, he says that it seemed about right because cars are more expensive out there. What say you? Scott
Just my opinion, it seems it is more expensive to live in California compared to most of the country - therefore, it follows that cars would be more expensive there than other states. And since it seldom rains there, they tend to be less rusty.
cars are high everywhere...take alook around any website,it doesnot matter the location,,dont believe me look at your local craigslist,,,eveybody know owns gold......just because they are priced high does not mean they are selling...
The prices for old cars in SoCal don't seem to be any higher than most of what I see available here in Portland OR area and the SoCal cars have way less rust.
YUP they are definitley higher here than anywhere else. Model A's back East are hundreds even thousands less than the same car here in So Cal.
I think it's almost everywhere. A little bit of supply and demand. The supply is finite, (they don't make 'em anymore). That and people think they have a goldmine, list 'em at some crazy price thinking their old four door is Barret-Jackson material and end up calling the s****per when nobody calls on it. Just saw a '64 Galaxy and a '67 Fairlane end up this way. Saw the Galaxy on craigslist, no motor/trans, missing the front clip, no ***le for $800. Last time I went to the pick'n'pull there it is, nice solid car that could have been fixed. It's not just the old stuff, thanks to cash for clunkers, it's almost impossible to even find cheap later model stuff.
It could have something to do with people exporting them out of the states from california as well. I know my father brought a container load of pommy sports cars over from california a few years ago and the reason he bought them from california was it was the cheapest place he could find to ship them from and other than paint and trim they were in pretty good condition. A lot of places here in Australia buy and ship cars from california for the same reasons.
Might seem high but when you can unbolt something with a regular wrench and not the fire wrench it starts to look better. Considering that most projects up here in the rust belt(MI included)start out by figuring how much time and money will be spent replacing everything from the door handles down due to rust saving time and money buying a better car makes sense. I know a lot of guys who have paid the cost plus the shipping for a west coast project and figured they were still bucks up.
tell your bro to do some research, find the make and model he is sure he wants, not just any old car available. 5K for a 4dr is pretty high. it should be a clean paint running driver at that point. What I would do is have him find out what car it is he gravitates towards and search for it while he saves up cash. Note that the better the body, less rust or dents- less money later. Also make sure all the pices are there, it's easy to get nickle and dimed finding odd parts. Lastly watch out for people just in it, to flip it, which seems to be normal here. I would saw watch craigslist the most-that seems to be the way to find deals. Also word of mouth-ask friends if they know anyone that has old cars. Always consider Arizona cars- I picked a nice Fairlane with a rebuild engine, fairly complete for 1500.00. With about less 400.00 of work I drove it back to Los Angeles. It's a nice rust free car.
Some people set their asking price way high expecting a low balling tire-kicker to make them an (unknowingly reasonable) offer, and still think they just made off like a bandit just because they bought something for X-amount less. It could be related to how many tire-kickers and wanna be bandits there are in the area?
They are higher for local paper but the internet has made other places catch up. Also it has to do alot with economy......and perception.
Socal is higher. I lived there for 14 years and couldn't believe the difference in prices when I moved to Colorado and cars here are just as nice, there's no humidity and not much rain so not much rust.
Your brother ain't looking very hard. I found a running driving 57 Chevy 2-door hardtop in Calif. for $7500 and missed it by 2 hours,then again saw an all original rust bucket 30 Model A listed for a rediculous $12,500. Prices are mixed up everywhere,just depends on the sellers,and if the Barrett-Jackson auction sold one like theirs for an outragous T.V. price.
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