The year was 1955. We were hearing just the first stirrings of rock-and-roll. Elvis was not yet a well known star. For car lovers it was a blockbuster year. Ford, Chevrolet and Plymouth all had hot new models with flashy chrome and bright new colors in two-tone and tri-tone combinations.

Most of the cars on the road were of pre-second-world-war design from the thirties and forties. Unless you were there, it is difficult to understand just how new and different these new models were, when compared to previous designs. Wrap-around windshields were brand new and found on almost every new car. A new two-door hardtop convertible was every teenager’s dream car.

I was a junior in high school. My older brother Del was out of school and working a steady job as a telegrapher for the Union Pacific Railroad. Del had a 1947 Ford Tudor and I was driving a 1942 Ford Tudor that had been a staff car during WW-II.

One day there was a knock at the door and to our amazement, the salesman for the local Ford dealership, Madison Motors, was at our door. He had driven up in a brand-new 1955 Ford Victoria that was two-tone Coral Mist and Raven Black, with a white and black interior. He had found out that my brother had a good job and he had come to sell him this fantastic new Victoria. We struck a deal. As part of the bargain, my ‘42 Ford was traded in along with my brother’s ‘47 Ford. So, I had claim to occasional driving privileges on the days that my brother was home from his work.

That Victoria was my dream car come true. The skinny steering wheel with power steering was like silk. It was quiet and smooth with the Fordomatic transmission. With the Power-Pack engine it had plenty of power, and boy, did it look classy to us. Coral Mist was a late color that does not appear in the Ford sales literature for that year. I am slightly red-green color vision defective, so it looked more like black and white to me. It looked pink to me only if I thought about it. The color should not be confused with the later 1956 Ford Coral color.

The star of the 1955 Ford model year was the Crown Victoria. A stainless steel tiara crossed over the top to make a flashy break between the front and back halves of the roof. This allowed Ford to offer an acrylic roof on the front half with a special model dubbed the Crown Victoria Skyliner. The Skyliner name only applied to the "glass-top" model and should not be confused with the later retractable Skyliner or the standard Sunliner Convertible. The Crown Victoria glass-top was stunningly beautiful. Although it only sold for some $60 more than the standard Crown Vic, it was not a popular model from a sales standpoint due to the "greenhouse" effect that made the passenger compartment hotter than Hades on a summer day. Ford only sold 1,999 1955 Crown Victorias with the glass roof. It is body code 64-B. Remember that air-conditioning was very expensive and very rare in a Ford. Sure, some Lincolns were available with the new air-conditioning, but almost no Fords had this accessory.

For my senior year in high school I was in "hog-heaven" when I had the opportunity to drive that beautiful Victoria.
Our local Ford Dealership, Madison Motors, only sold about a hundred cars and trucks per year. As I remember it, they only sold one Crown Victoria for the entire year. It was Tropical Rose and Snowshoe White. Tropical Rose was a gaudy sherbet color that was quite stylish in 1955 but looks garish by today’s standards.

A young man from St. Maries, Idaho bought the Tropical Rose and Snowshoe White Crown Victoria. I was told that after owning it for only a few months, they left the road at a high rate of speed and rolled it into the St. Joe River. It was a total wreck. I have never forgotten how beautiful that car looked sitting in Con Madison’s Ford showroom.

The years rolled by and my brother and I both moved on to many other new cars but we could not forget the joy that we savored with the memory of that Pink and Black Victoria.

Moving forward in time to about 1975… a local used car dealer here in Spokane, Don Rohrer, had begun seeking out and selling collector type cars in his showroom on North Division Street. Don acquired a 1955 Ford Fairlane Club Sedan that had super low miles and was showroom perfect. We had to have it. Seems to me that we traded a 47 Ford, a Model A Ford and some cash for it. I don’t remember for sure. Anyhow, we got our hands on this absolutely perfect 55 Fairlane Club Sedan with the tinsel in the upholstery fabric, and fresh as new. The only thing wrong with this car was that it was not a Crown Victoria glass-top, which was still our dream car.

Shortly after buying the Club Sedan, the telephone rang and a friend told me that he had spotted a black and white 55 Crown Victoria glass-top sitting behind the Ford dealership in Ritzville, Washington. Within the hour we were off on a 65-mile trip to check it out. Sure enough, there behind a cyclone fence sat a black and white 64-B glass-top that looked pretty good. The dealership was closed on Sunday, so we could only look through the fence.

The following Monday I called the dealership, Benzel Ford, in Ritzville. The owner told me that he had sold the car new to a Catholic Priest. The priest later traded it in. For a year or so it had been in the hands of someone going to Washington State University. He had recently gotten the car back again to his dealership. Since he had started the dealership in 1955, his plan was to put the car in show condition and display it on his showroom floor. He had no plans to sell the car. I told him that we had a 1955 Ford also and perhaps he would like to see it. He thought that that would be nice but had no enthusiasm to do so.

The next day I took off from work and drove the 55 Club Sedan to Ritzville and parked it in front of the Benzel Ford dealership. The owner, Larry Benzel was there and immediately took an interest in the perfect 55 club sedan. I handed him the keys and suggested that he take it for a drive. That he did. When he returned from driving the Fairlane Club Sedan he had nothing to say. I asked him what he thought of it and he replied, "I feel sick."

He felt sick because he knew he had to have that car for his showroom… and he also knew that the only way that he was going to get it was to trade his black and white Crown Victoria glass-top. We traded cars straight across.
After we got the 64-B glass-top we looked up the priest who had bought it new. We found him in Post Falls, Idaho. He liked the black and white colors and thought that the glass roof gave him a better view to the heavens. Oddly, he had ordered the car new with the small hubcaps instead of the usual wheel covers.

The 1955 Crown Victoria 64-B glass-top was with us for a number of years. It appeared in several car shows and a number of car club events. As I recall we began to lose interest in the older Fords and the car was sold in about 1983 to raise money for the purchase of a new 1984 Lincoln Mark VII. A Pomeroy, Washington farmer who was an avid member of the national Crown Victoria Association purchased the car. I never saw the car again and I have no idea of where it is today.

Back in the middle 1970’s my brother Del was driving down the highway when he spotted a blue 1954 Ford Skyliner heading it the opposite direction. He flipped a U-turn and followed the car until he met the owner, John Peterson. John had restored the car which was very unusual in that it had the dealer glass window on the hood to show off the new overhead valve V-8 engine. Some time later I met John Peterson and he told me that he knew where there was a Tropical Rose and Snowshoe White 1955 Ford Crown Victoria glass-top 64-B lurking in a garage on the South Hill of Spokane. He couldn’t remember the address, but gave me an idea of the general vicinity. I went looking for the car but was unable to find it. After several frustrating and unsuccessful attempts to find it, I was able to locate the car. It was in a dilapidated one-car garage next to a 1920 vintage two-story house. The garage door was stuck up about a foot from the driveway and the car could not be seen from the street. I rang the doorbell but no one was home, so I invited myself to take a look. The car was in a tiny garage with all tires flat and the nose of the car was under a workbench. The garage was leaning over and appeared to be on the verge of collapse. A truss above the car had already broken, with the broken truss pointing directly at the glass-top roof of the car. I knew that I had to have that car.

Some days later I spoke with the woman who came to the door of the house, and inquired about the possibility of buying the car. She informed me that the car belonged to a family member who was away in the military service, but that he planned to turn the car into a hot-rod. She offered me no encouragement that the car would ever be for sale. Being the persistent cuss that I am, I returned to the house about every six months to inquire about the possible purchase of the car. No luck. In fact they clearly considered me to be a pest. I was not inclined to give-up.

My wife is a Doctor of Optometry and as luck would have it, about a year or two later, the lady of the house where the 64-B was lurking scheduled a vision-exam with my wife. My wife mentioned something about my passion for old cars and the lady realized that the doctor’s last name was the same as that pesky guy that kept leaving business cards in their door. Although she did not want to sell the car to me, she allowed as how she might sell it to my wife! Wonderful! My wife, Barbara, made the necessary arrangements and soon I was on my way with fresh tires and wheels and a tow chain to bring the car home.

The car was a horrible dirty mess. I really worked to get it cleaned up and the dead leaves out of all the cracks. The paint polished up pretty good, but in spite of how good the car was starting to look, it was clear that this car needed a complete inside and outside restoration. I stashed the car in my warehouse, waiting the day that I had the funds to properly restore it.

A year or so passed and one day I happened to stop in at Don Rohrer’s Select Cars showroom to check out his inventory. While I was looking at cars a gentleman came into the showroom and I heard him ask Don if he knew of anywhere he could find a 55 Ford Crown Victoria. Don replied that he should talk to me. At that time my brother and I had four 55 Crown Victorias, two glass-tops and two standard, plus one 55 straight Victoria. The fellow insisted that I take him to my warehouse to see these cars. I somewhat reluctantly agreed to do so. When he saw the Tropical Rose and Snowshoe White 64-B he announced that he had to have it. I pointed out that the car did not run, and in spite of the fact that it looked pretty good, it needed a total restoration. Plus, I had no intention whatsoever of selling it. He seemed to have it in his head that I would sell if he only offered enough money. No. I know from experience that in a situation like this, offering more money only makes the owner angry instead of persuading him to sell. He left. But, for a period of about two years, every three months or so, the phone would ring and this guy would be inquiring if I was ready yet to sell the Ford Crown Vic glass-top. The answer was always no.

As it turned out, one dark and rainy November night our doorbell rang, and here was the same guy asking if I wanted to sell the car. He caught me at a time when I really needed money for something or other, I don’t remember what, so I agreed to sell. He had a roll of hundred dollar bills with him and proceeded to count out the cash to pay me a price that I thought at the time was ridiculously high. He lived about a hundred miles away, but the next day he showed up with a large truck to winch the car onto, and away he went. One reason that I decided to sell was that the screaming Tropical Rose color that looked pretty good in the 1950s was just not something that I could live with in the 1970s.

Once you have established a reputation for buying collectible cars you will begin to notice that through referrals, the cars start finding you. This happened to us one time during the late 1970s when the doorbell rang and there was a young man wanting to sell us his 1958 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser. We had no particular desire or need for his big hulking Turnpike Cruiser, but when he told us the price it was clear that he was willing to practically give it away, the price was so cheap. We bought it.

Later, we traded the Turnpike Cruiser to a Canadian fellow for a 1954 Mercury Sun Valley… but that’s another story. What’s of interest here is that Larry, our Canadian friend had two 1954 Mercury Sun Valleys that he had acquired in trade for his 1956 Ford Crown Victory 64-B glass-top. That was an extremely rare car, only 603 were produced by Ford. Unfortunately his 1956 64-B was so rusty that the bottom perimeter of the car was just shaggy from missing metal. Somehow he was talked into trading for the two Sun Valleys. He later explained that he felt that the Mercurys were misrepresented and that he had gotten the worst part of the deal. He regretted that he had ever agreed to let the 1956 64-B go.

Take a look at the photo of the cover of the November - December 1976 issue of Special-Interest Autos magazine shown here. Yes, that’s a Tropical Rose and Snowshoe White 55 64-B on the cover. Our friend in Canada really wanted to buy one. He was paying airmail rates to subscribe to Hemmings Motor News. When he opened his Hemmings he found an ad for this car which appears on the cover of the magazine. The party that placed the "for sale" ad was in California, so Larry called them up and discovered that this was the cover car… but that the car had already been sold. He inquired as to why the car was sold before the ad came out. The seller explained that some Canadian guy had offered him a higher price if he would sell before the ad appeared. Larry discovered that the Canadian buyer was the same person who had gotten his 1956 64-B away from him.

So, Larry, thinking that he knew where this car, in moving from California to Canada would cross the border, called up the Canadian border customs station and said, "Say, did you happen to see a pink and white 55 Ford Crown Victoria come through recently?" They did. Larry suggested that perhaps they would like to call this number in California and talk to the seller to see what he sold it for, compared to what the buyer had declared the price to be at the border crossing. They did. The Canadian customs people went out and seized the car. The buyer was hit with enormous fines and penalties and it was months before he was able to get his car back.

They say that revenge is sweet, but I would not have done that. I guess that the moral here is that in the old car hobby, you had best play it as Mr. Straight Arrow, or it will come back to bite you. I truly hope that all three of the 1955 Ford Crown Victoria 64-Bs that I have been telling you about are sitting in some well cared for car collection someplace. I would still like to own one, but now that they are fifty years old they are worth so darned much money that I would rather buy something newer… before that "U" shaped depreciation curve starts rocketing upward.

WDM

The quick and easy answer is that your collector car is worth whatever you, as a willing seller are willing to accept, and what a willing buyer will agree to pay. So the question really becomes, "What is a figure that a buyer might be willing to pay to buy this vehicle?" That is not an easy question to answer.

Perhaps you should let the market decide. Enter your car in one of the many collector car auctions and you can easily find an answer. You may not like what others are willing to pay to buy your car. If that is the case, you hopefully will have had a "reserve" on the selling price and your entry becomes a "no sale." You will have paid the entry fee to find out that there is no willing buyer at your price.

Not long ago I was at a Silver Collector Car Auction in Spokane. A gentleman from Moses Lake, Washington entered his 1989 Chrysler TC by Maserati in the auction. Since I am the owner of two of these Chrysler TCs I was most interested to see how the bidding went for his car.

The car had been repainted a non-stock ugly frog green color. The expensive Italian leather interior had been replaced with vinyl. The costly Fondmetal wheels had been replaced with some odd looking aftermarket spoked wheels. Worst of all, an ugly "continental spare wheel" had been added to the rear bumper. As I recall the bidding stalled at $11,500. This did not meet the sellers reserve and the car was a "no-sale." If that had been my car I would have grabbed the money and run!

On the other hand, you may find that your car will sell at auction for substantially more than you hoped it would bring. If there are two or more qualified buyers that want the car, who knows where the bidding will stop? I have observed at auction cars selling for more that twice what I would be willing to pay… but, does that mean I truly know what the car is worth and the buyer is ignorant? No, I don’t think so. Whatever a buyer is willing to pay is in fact what that car is worth to the buyer.

Daniel Strohl, writing in the February 2005 issue of Hemmings Motor News about the Kruse auction at Auburn cannot resist injecting into his report what he thinks a "fair" price would be. (I am referring to the 1956 Studebaker Hawk on page 52 that sold for $10,900. Mr. Strohl considered this to be about $2,000 more than a "fair" price.) This strikes me as arrogance. The fair price is the price at which the auctioneer’s hammer went down. It is just possible that the buyer was more knowledgeable about the car than the journalist observer.

It is the job of the auction firm to get buyers and sellers together. If your car is not bid up to or above your reserve price it is their job to persuade you to lower your selling price to match the buyers price. You may find that in your mind the car is already sold, so lowering your reserve is just being realistic. Even if you think that you "gave the car away," in fact what happened is that you let the market decided what your car was worth.

Selling your car at an auction just to find out what it is worth might be just as stupid as going to the blood bank to donate blood just to find out if you have AIDS. So, here are some other considerations to ponder.

Condition is Everything

Most collector car enthusiasts are familiar with the point system for rating cars such as that used by the "Old Cars Price Guide:" 1. Excellent, 2. Fine, 3. Very Good, 4. Good, 5. Restorable, and 6. Parts Car.

You might want to transpose these criteria as: 1. Perfection, 2. Damn Nice, 3. Looks good until you get up close, 4. A driver, but has problems, 5. God help us! and 6. Junk. Based upon condition, the worth of your car can range from way above Kelly Blue Book or NADA book, or in fact it may have a negative value if it is such a basket case that it will cost you to get rid of it.

For example, last Summer I sold my brother’s 1997 Ford Probe for $10,000 cash. The car was perfection. Only 1,600 miles since leaving the dealer showroom. Never been in the rain… needing absolutely nothing. NADA book on the car was $5,087.

On the other hand, I drove about 70 miles to investigate a 1995 Ford Crown Victoria that was advertised in our local newspaper, only to find that it was a complete nightmare. The car had been in a major wreck that bent the frame. It had been sitting out in acid rain near a smelter. No kidding, I could not find anything on the car that was not damaged so badly that it was junk. There would be no point in paying to have it hauled home. It may have been a good set of plans. But, you may not realize how easy it is in your attempt to restore a "junker," to discover that you have spent $40,000 building a $20,000 show car.

Hire an Appraiser

Talk is cheap. If you have not paid to have a professional appraisal done on your collector car you may discover that what you think it is worth lacks credibility with your insurance company. Three years ago an uninsured driver from Idaho ran a red light with his truck and totaled my 1986 Cadillac Eldorado. My little red Eldo was insured on our personal auto policy as a daily driver. It had over 100K miles on the odometer but it was a beautiful and well preserved car that was a joy to drive and own.

Our insurance company was of the opinion that the value of the car was less than one-half of what I was willing to accept as a settlement. It took six months to settle the claim. I was required to hire a professional appraiser to attempt to appraise the wreck as to its replacement value before the wreck. This was an exercise that I do not care to repeat. Now I make it my business to have a professional appraisal done and on file for every car in our collection. The professional appraisals done by a staff member of the Silver Collector Car Auctions include pictures, the point system rating and the information I would need to have on hand to settle a dispute. I may not agree with their findings, but they are an independent third party that is providing their objective appraisal.

Keep in mind that there may be a big difference between "market value," and "replacement value." This is a big problem when we are talking collectibles and antiques. You may not be able to find a comparable replacement for your destroyed collector car at any price. You might want to discuss "stated value" insurance with your agent.

A few years ago I purchased a blue 1988 Buick Reatta from LaFavor’s Showroom Cars here in Spokane. I paid $8,000 for the car and felt somewhat uncomfortable in that this was, I thought, a rather high price. But I had to have the car. It was a beauty. I had the car professional appraised. The appraisal for market value came in at $9,500. I had no serious intentions of selling the car. But a Buick affectionado offered to buy it at $10,000 so it is now gone to a new home.

Consult a Published Price Guide

You may want to reference one or more of the published collector car price guides. Go to www.blackbookusa.com and check out CPI. This is the "Black-Book" that your banker or insurance agent may use as a reference. Also see the Old Cars Price Guide magazine which you can find on just about any magazine rack. A word of caution here, Unless you thoroughly understand their point system you may mistakenly think that your car is worth a whole lot more that what is realistic.

Subscribe to the "Bible," of the old car Hobby, Hemmings Motor News. Do a survey of the classified ads for cars that are comparable to yours. Remember that these are asking prices and do not reflect the actual selling prices.

Don’t forget the more familiar sources such as NADA. See: www.nadaguides.com and go to the Classic Car section. Enter your car in collector car shows. You are sure to meet owners of cars similar to yours. Learn what they think about the current market values of various collector cars. Keep an open mind. Know that you can be wrong.

Several years ago my brother and I were attending an "All Clubs Open Car Show." My brother was admiring a beautiful little black 1934 Ford three window coupe. The owner in a somewhat flippant manner said, "I’d sell this car if I could find someone willing to give me (here he quote what he clearly thought was a high price) for it. My brother said, "sold" and got out his checkbook. The owner looked shocked. Clearly he did not appreciate the impact of what he had just said, or expect that someone would take him up on it.

So, we are stuck in an awkward position of not having a good answer. The owner of a collectible car may feel uncomfortable not knowing if the price he wants is a "give-away" that is foolishly too cheap… or if he is way high and asking an embarrassingly high price. If you are a buyer you are in a much more comfortable position. You know that if you have found the car of your dreams, the only price question is, "Whatever it takes."

Take comfort in the knowledge that if you are dealing in collectibles, the supply is limited and demand is surely and steadily increasing. If you lose money on your collector car you will have to have really screw-up. The usual worst case scenario is that you just have to wait a few more years for the market to catch up to what in your opinion is a fair value for what your collector car is worth.

WDM

Is your car "collectible?" Are you lusting after a car that you believe is a "Collector Car?" What exactly is a collector car? Perhaps you have struggled with these questions as you are pondering the expenditure of a sizable amount of your savings for that car you have always wanted.

According to the State of Washington, your car qualifies as a "collector vehicle" and can be licensed as such if it is thirty years old or more. The state will issue a license plate for the rear only, (no front plate required), that has a number and the inscription "collector vehicle." This is a permanent plate that does not expire. It’s an ugly looking thing. You can register your car with your own plate as long as it is a Washington plate that is correct for the year of the vehicle. For example this site: www.licenseplates.tv will custom make plates for you the are correct for any state and any year. I had them make up a plate for my 1973 Thunderbird with the number, WDM 937. This is my initials and the last three digits of my birth year. The state licensing department will caution you that the permanent collector plate is to be on a vehicle that is used for shows, club activities and pleasure driving only… not for use on a "daily driver" vehicle. That seems fair. This is a good deal for the car collector, but thirty years is a long long time.

If you consult your insurance agent, you will discover that the different companies have different ideas as to what a "collector car" is. Some require your vehicle to be 25 years old. Others are satisfied if it qualifies as a "special interest" vehicle. What that means is not clear except that they start talking about corvettes and exotic sports cars or custom built cars. In any case the insurer of your collector car will want you to show proof that you have another vehicle properly insured as your "daily driver."

Would my 1993 Lincoln Mark VIII qualify for insurance as a "collector car." Most likely it would not as I would need to convince them that I was not planing to drive it daily. But, to me it is as collectible as any car I could hope to find. Would my 1986 Fiero GT be insurable as a collector vehicle? What if I have a "youthful driver" in the family, could we still insure it as a collector car? Most likely not.

If you own a collection of automobiles you might want to do what my brother and I do with our collection of some thirty cars. Go get yourself insured with a "broad form auto liability" policy. Then you will have proof of insurance regardless of what you happen to be driving. The insurance is on you, not the car. For casualty loss coverage we are self insured. Why do you think that those special “Collector Car Insurance” plans are so inexpensive? it is because they have very low claims to cover.

Since getting the broad form liability policy several years ago I have been involved in one collision. A monster size truck ran into my car while I was waiting at a red light. The other driver was ticketed and his insurance company paid for the damage to my vehicle.

Strangely enough, you may cross trails with people who are deeply involved in the collector car hobby who have very strong opinions as to what is or is not "collectible." I had a beautiful 1977 Thunderbird with only 36K miles on the odometer in a collector car auction. The bidding did not meet my reserve and the car was a no-sale. Before moving on the auctioneer questioned whether my Thunderbird was sufficiently "collectible." Later I sold the car to a car collector in New Mexico for substantially more money. The new owner has reported to me that he recently picked up a trophy in a car show with the car.

If you check out the NADA web site or the "Old Cars Price Guide," and you will discover inconsistencies that are difficult to explain. For example the NADA site skips over the 1986 to 1991 Cadillacs and continues with the 1992 model. Apparently they think that my 1987 Eldorado and my 1990 Eldorado are not worthy of being "collectible." I strongly disagree. The Old Cars Price Guide shows ridiculously low numbers for the Pontiac Fiero. They are not even close to the prices that a 1986 to 1988 Fiero GT will bring on the market.

You will find that even major players in the old car hobby such as Hemmings Motor News may "speak with forked tongue." I am referring here to the March 2004 Special Collectors Edition of Hemmings. On page 114 they state: "Buick made a splash with the two-seat Reatta, but it was (1) ugly, (2) had a horrid interior and (3) conceptually, was a bad joke. It was gone after ‘91." Here is someone who claims authority on the subject of collector cars speaking like a complete crack-pot. I have owned two Buick Reattas and I can assure you that it is Hemmings Motor News that is the bad joke here. The only problem with the Buick Reatta was that it was priced out of the market. Not many people we willing to pay 20% more than a Riveria for a two seat sporty coupe.

Similarly, on page 136 they write: "The rush toward retro raced ahead in 2002, just about everywhere you looked: The Ford GT-40, BMW’s new Mini, and the Ford Thunderbird, although the latter quickly became an overpriced flop." What is this crackpot thinking? The 2002 Thunderbird is an overpriced flop? Nonsense! Ford stated up front that they had limited production and could only build 25,000 new T-birds per year. They have built and sold more new Thunderbirds than Corvette convertibles. More than the original "baby-birds" in 1955-56 and 57. If you conclude that the new Thunderbird is a flop, you would have to conclude also that the original ‘55 - ‘57 thunderbird was a flop. That of course is ridiculous.

We own a 2003 Thunderbird. It was purchased as a collector car. Although it is now more than two years since we took delivery, it only has a thousand miles on it. Yes, it is a collector car.

We love it!

So, what defines a "collector car?" The answer is similar to the answer to the question, "What is art?" The answer is that a collector car is defined by you. If you declare that your car is a "collector car" and if your car collection consists of only one car. Then, fine… you are correct. Enjoy.

WDM

I am a chronic car collector. Some of my friends and relatives think that I am “over the top.” They have pointed out to me that there is a fine line between enthusiasm and obsessive-compulsive behavior, (which is diagnosable and treatable with new drugs, I understand).

Perhaps I am not quite as unbalanced as some think. A good friend of mine who is quite knowledgeable about collector cars tells me that he put the bulk of his retirement money into high interest paying debentures from Metropolitan Securities. Unfortunately, they have recently gone into bankruptcy and he will be lucky to recover ten cents on the dollar.

Between my brother and myself, we own over thirty collectible cars. We are not buying for speculation to sell. But, we are not in it to lose our shirt either. Every car that we have purchased is one that we would like to keep, after we have put it in show condition. If someone wants to buy one of our cars, we will most likely sell, but only at a premium price, because we are not in it for the money, but for our own pleasure and pride of ownership. We recommend that you too, buy something that you really want to keep. Then, if you can sell it at a substantial increase… fine! But if not, you’re still happy. It’s really quite simple. All that you need to do is buy right a vehicle that is sure to increase in value. Of course, what you buy will determine if it will be worth substantially more as time passes.

So, here is a plan that is fail safe:

1. Only buy a convertible, red in color, made by a major car manufacturer such as Ford, General Motors or Chrysler.
2. Then only buy it if it shows super low mileage, (well less than 10,000 miles per year if it is newer, much less if it is older), or if someone else has already spent a gob of money making it perfect.

As you move into other models, colors and manufacturers, you increase your risk of not finding a buyer that wants it more than you do. If you make it your business to know about how popular various models are, and how condition impacts market value, you will feel more comfortable assuming the risk that you take in buying any used vehicle.

Once you have found the car that meets the above conditions, it is most important that you show no emotional attachment to it. Feign an air of only mild interest. Be sure to have on hand a roll of cash, hopefully hundred-dollar bills. Show empathy with the seller regarding his or her reason for wanting to sell. Offer to help them out with a cash offer that is well below what you think the car would bring wholesale. If the seller balks at your offer, let them bump you up to wholesale, but not higher.

There is a major exception to the above paragraph.

That is, if you really want the car for yourself and you really don’t give a hoot what it’s future market value may be. If this is the case you will most likely strike a deal at whatever the seller requires from you to sell. The downside of course is that you may have to wait for a very long time for the market to catch up with the value of the car to you. But, if you are sure of yourself…. do it. We own one car that we are into several thousand dollars over the highest current retail value. But, we do not plan to ever sell… so we are happy, and the seller was willing to part with his treasured car.

Once you have bought the car you are going to have to pay sales tax and title transfer, and possibly emissions testing fees and license tab fees. If you buy at an auction of course there will be a buyer’s fee for the Auction Company also. These costs could add up to 20% of the wholesale value of the car, so be sure to include these costs when you are determining your maximum offer. If you are out of your home area be sure to include transport costs to get your new purchase home.

Know up front that once you get your new purchase home, even if it looks fantastic and appears to be the buy of the century, you need to plan on spending a minimum of one thousand dollars on your new purchase. Something is bound to need attention. Don’t trust tires that are 25 years old. Replace them. Most likely you will need a new battery, belts, radiator flush, etc. From experience I have found that about a thousand dollars is right. I have had cars that cost much less than that to detail and shape up. But, I have also seen bills that came closer to three or four thousand dollars, if you discover that something more serious needs to be dealt with.

If you plan to sell the car for more than you have into it, you will need to correct any flaws or problems that you find. For example, any cracked glass will be replaced. Any wear showing on leather seats or steering wheel will be repaired. Any finish work on the body such as repairing minor body damage or replacing striping that has been buffed off, should be done only by the best body shop that you can find. Do not accept less than the best quality work available. The best detail shops now have equipment and materials that can make a so-so finish look fantastically beautiful. This can cost $300 to make the finish on your car look better than new. Pay their price and do it right.

Let the world know through car shows, etc. that your car can be purchased, but only at a premium price. Sooner or later, someone is going to fall hopelessly in love with it and demand that you take his or her money, no matter how high the price. If this happens, put the money into something that you like even more. If it does not happen, that’s OK too, as you will know that your net worth in your portfolio of collector cars is increasing daily with the going market rates for comparable vehicles.

WDM