Is Wayne Carini Joking?

Thanks, Team-Man!

This final flurry of inane postings did the trick. A Christmas present to myself. Now on to Dork status!

How many more postings 'til full on Dork?

I'm a HalfDork myself and find it funny that, on this site, the word "HalfDork" would come with a red underline beneath it indicating a misspelling.

Is that irony, or just plain old fracked up?

Dunno. A thou maybe? Who's the administrator here? I remember Andre Rousseau ("AndreGT6") from the GWN had the same Q a few years ago but I don't remember the answer. Maybe he was just annointed to the next level.

I think you're getting worked up for nothing.

He's making a prediction based on what he sees from the Auctions, because that's about 60% of his business. It's also Forbes Magazine, not Classic Car Collector Weekly. That magazine is for people who have more money than they know what to do with. Also, if he shared the page with 3 other specialists about investing in whatever, their column is probably the same: opinionated and vague. You just probably picked up on the car stuff more.

Now is Wayne knowledgeable about many cars, especially exotic and rare cars? yes. Does he know everything about every car? No. Does he keep an eye on what things a selling for at auction and from his business? Yeah of course. Does he keep an eye on what things sell for on Craigslist? No.

If he's talking about what to invest in, what to hold and what to sell, that sounds an awful lot like stocks, which is probably the format Forbes asked those "experts" to write in.

So it's his opinion and that's all it is. Doesn't make it set in stone. His prediction could be completely wrong. What he says in that magazine should be taken with a grain of salt, especially by blue collar folks like us.

I don't know if he is a good guy or not, but I hate his show. I hold him responsible for the fad of hauling crap out of a barn and claiming that it is something special because it is an "untouched original." I consider an unrestored piece of junk to be worth restored value - restoration cost.

He just seems to lazy or cheap to do the restoration (or even bothering to clean off the cobwebs) and passes the cost of that onto the next owner.

How many people reading Forbes for car investment tips are NOT looking at #1 examples?

Not to belabor this, but it doesn't matter what the readers are looking at. What matters is what's a #1 condition Volvo P1800 worth today, or will be worth six months, 3 years, 5 years, 100 years from now? Not $100K. Not now. Not ever. Period. But he's making a buy recommendation based on $100K being the norm soon.

Gary wrote: I was visiting the dentist the other day and the Dec. 2014 issue of Forbes Life magazine was in the waiting room. Wayne Carini has a small column to discuss what's hot and what's not in the classic car world, I suppose to give clueless high rollers an idea of what to invest in. To my amazement he put a Buy Now recommendation on the Volvo P1800, all models from '61 to '73, with the following statement: "Prices are now on the rise, and $100,000 could soon be the norm." Is he joking? He's supposed to be an expert. Does anybody here really think that's going to happen? I certainly don't. (Disclosure: I owned a '68 1800S for six years back in the seventies, and while I liked the styling I found it to be overweight, underpowered, have extremely heavy steering, and handle like a truck).

The dude must be sucking on a huge crack pipe. Based on my experience parting out two P1800 ES wagons, Volvo guys are the cheapest people on the planet. Ended up scraping the drive-trains and suspensions because they are not worth anything.

Auctions of #1 condition autos represent an artificial market where both supply and demand are manipulated. Virtually anything is possible in these circumstances. All it takes is a single person willing to write a big check and voila, $100K Volvo. Of course, that doesn't mean your identical Volvo can be sold for anywhere near that.

Gary wrote: Not to belabor this, but it doesn't matter what the readers are looking at. What matters is what's a #1 condition Volvo P1800 worth today, or will be worth six months, 3 years, 5 years, 100 years from now? Not $100K. Not now. Not ever. Period. But he's making a buy recommendation based on $100K being the norm soon.

Oh really?

http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/21916/lot/334/

Yes, really.

Joe, you hit the apex a bit late with this argument. We already discussed that $92K anomaly a few days ago on this thread. And to split hairs, $92K isn't $100K. So just because one specimen drew that kind of 'scarole one time, one cannot draw the conclusion that "prices are on the rise and $100K could soon be the norm," as Carini so sagely put it to the Forbes Life readers (pun intended). The norm? Ha! To wit, how about that TR4 that went for $90K+ in 2006 at a B-J auction? How many TR4's have topped that since then? (Uh, none). Excellent examples are still struggling to sell in the teens and twenties where they belong, and will continue to sell in that trading range for many years to come, along with Volvo P1800s.

Gary--- you are correct, I agree that P1800 prices won't top $100K on a regular basis. However the nicest examples will--- and nearly have already. I think that is what Wayne was referring to. Keep in mind, his world revolves around collector car auctions, and #1 cars--- I think that is what he was referring to.

Also keep in mind that what appeared in Forbes may not have been the entire interview. Frequently magazines shorten these pieces to conserve space. It could be the Mr. Carini had more to say, but it wasn't included.

Yes, I think it's crazy as well---- but you only need two crazy people in an auction audience to make sales like this happen. In a world of $100K Fiat Jollys, any price is possible.

Caught a mini-marathon of Carini's show the other night.

Gosh he seems like a nice guy, doesn't he? Just a sweet dwarfish millionaire trying his darnedest to make his outrageously wealthy clients happy . . . like real life with three extra zeros.

That 92K included the 10% buyers premium for the auction house as well. The hammer price was in the low 80's.

This is an anomaly and I don't see another 1800 coming close for a long time. Even the Hagarty guys say it's a 32-35K car.

I'm willing to give Carini a pass on this one, just because the high dollar folks live in a completely different world (dimension? parallel universe?) from the rest of us. If this could happen at Barret-Jackson Mullet-mobile sells for 60K then you have to admit anything is possible. I think I even started a thread about that Firebird as I was watching that auction when it was sold. Rich folks pay crack-pipe prices for what they want, because they can

I just received my February issue of Hemmings Sport & Exotic Car today. I always enjoy this magazine, if for nothing else its' reports of major auction sales.

Among the sales you didn't recently make were a 1980 Toyota Land Cruiser. The average selling price for this ride is $17,000. This one sold for $137,500.

A 1967 Volkswagen Type 2 Camper selling for $99,000 compared to an average sell price of $32,300.

And finally a 1963 Volkswagen 23-window Microbus which sold for $125,000! Or, as they said in their magazine, just over $5,430 per window!!

As P.T. Barnum said, there is a fool born every minute. Of course your sell experience will almost assuredly be different!

Pretty much none of us is part of the investor and high end car world. A lot of us will confuse a car that hasn't got frilly rocker panels and an uncracked dash with a #1 car, because that is the world we inhabit. Only very few of us around have either the skills or the money to subject a car to a true #1 restoration, or buy and sell cars in that realm.

Also, keep in mind that that price guides like Hagerty's are trailing prices in both directions by at least several months and due to the scarcity of #1 sales, I would take their numbers for fairly rare cars in this particular condition with a large salt lick.

Keep in mind that someone is asking $1.75m for a white 80s Testarossa right now. While I doubt they'll get that much right now, I'm pretty certain they'll get substantially more for this particular car than any white 80s single mirror Testarossa that I can dig up out here. 'cos the one I can dig up is going to be an 60k-80k car. Provenance counts, and if you get the right combination of scarcity (after all, someone in this thread is admitting to reducing the supply), provenance and demand, I don't think $100k for the right model P1800 in #1 condition is that far fetched.

Heck, prices for a fairly rare but not that spectacular 964 model quadrupled for not much of a reason over the last four years. I remember seeing RS Americas selling for $30k-ish in 2010 and now people are asking $125k+ for them. They're rare, but they're not that special either.

06HHR wrote: I'm willing to give Carini a pass on this one, just because the high dollar folks live in a completely different world (dimension? parallel universe?) from the rest of us. If this could happen at Barret-Jackson Mullet-mobile sells for 60K then you have to admit anything is possible. I think I even started a thread about that Firebird as I was watching that auction when it was sold. Rich folks pay crack-pipe prices for what they want, because they can

Perhaps the big draw was the seats! Man-o-Man I always thought PepBoys knew what they were doing.

You have to take into account that the high-end auction circles that Wayne deals in makes this very possible. The people buying at these auctions aren't volvo enthusiasts so the market goes with whatever they'll pay. Times change can't have blinders on in the car world.

That 1.75M tessarossa is an unfair comparison.

It's a car that almost everyone knows and was on TV for 3 years as Crockett's Tessarossa in Miami Vice. That is priced because the car was an 80's automotive star not necessarily because of condition.

Gary wrote: Not to belabor this, but it doesn't matter what the readers are looking at. What matters is what's a #1 condition Volvo P1800 worth today, or will be worth six months, 3 years, 5 years, 100 years from now? Not $100K. Not now. Not ever. Period. But he's making a buy recommendation based on $100K being the norm soon.

You need to read "recommendation" as "prediction", because that's all it is.

Who knows what his definition of soon is? Could it be 1 year? Could it be 5 years? 10 years? We don't know.

To say that a Volvo P1800 will never be worth $100k is a bit ridiculous, because you don't know that. #1 examples could one day, maybe not tomorrow, but several years from now? Sure.

You need to remember that people that do what Wayne does are the Meteorologists of the Car Auction world. They make predictions based on information they see. They are not always right. This is probably one of those situations.

Well I agree with you on one point: "They are not always right. This is probably one of those situations."

Yup, that's what I've been saying right along.

Here's another opinion.

I also know of a '70 240Z where the restoration cost was north of $100k. Few of us here have the ability and time to do that sort of restoration, but the quality of the car would probably put it near the $100k mark I would think. It's a totally different world than the one we live in, and those guys that play in it pay for good stuff.

In reply to racerdave600:Funny, Datsun/Nissan did a Zcar restoration project a few years ago. They built almost new cars complete with warranty, as I recall. They couldn't sell them at what $25K+/-.

Obviously as you said, I live in a different world than the $100K Zcar restorer you mentioned. But I can't for the life of me see if a factory restoration with warranty will not sell at $25K. Why someone would ever think a non-factory restore would sell for over $100K.