Parting out cars for profit and maybe fun: 2012 Mercedes C300 edition

Do you have a radio available?  Not the upper screen display, I'm talking about the unit under the center vents (it's all buttons and it should include the heated seat buttons & hazzard flasher button).

Yikes, sorry I didn't keep up with this. Fornetti, although you likely don't need it, the radio did sell a good while ago.

I did get the engine and transmissions sold, though it took longer than I would have liked and didn't get me quite as much as I hoped. Trans went for $650 and engine went for $550. I have been playing with pricing and such, trying to get things moved. I'd like to free up the shelves the parts are on, not for any specific purpose, but because they've been loaded with Mercedes parts for [checks first page] dear lord going on 3 years now?! Anyway, I've moved quite a bit but still have more of course. I think I could empty one shelving unit if I rearranged.

If I scrapped all the parts left, I'd consider this a financial win. It took a lot longer than I had hoped due to the Mercedes parts just not selling as fast as prior cars I've done. In the past, my delays in pulling and listing the parts was the bottleneck. For this car, the parts sitting for sale and not selling was the bottleneck.

My awesome new totals:

Purchase price incl fees    $2428
Towing    $62
eBay fees    $829.20
Total costs    $3319.2
Parts sales    $9814
Net    $6494.8

Of couse that doesn't include the opportunity cost of two large shelving units loaded with parts and two rolling carts with engine and transmission on them for 3 years. But it wasn't space I was going to use for anything else productive.

I do still have $1000 in parts listed. And I have the exhaust laying around somewhere that didn't sell - I think I'll cut the catalytic converters off and sell them for scrap. It's shocking what those are worth.

What vehicle(s) do you consider to be the sweet spot between purchase price and sales price/time?

In reply to DrBoost :

Well, I've only done a few, but the MR2 was probably the fastest selling. I think because there are so few of them that sold in the US and the people that do own them are enthusiasts. In addition to the MR2 and Mercedes, I've totally parted out a Honda Accord, Lexus GS400, and a 1966 Bonneville. I've sold a few car parts here and there off other cars, but those are the ones I've reduced to nothing but car parts and scrap metal. The Lexus had solid demand for almost everything. The Bonneville went well due to rarity. The Accord I made a ton of local parts sales that helped get rid of stuff fast. I feel like if you wanted to do the same car multiple times so you had an easy way to inventory and sell things, the MR2 spyder would be a good place to start. But I think any enthusiast car would be good, especially if it's rare-ish. Too rare and your market and availability of wrecks is too small. Too common and parts aren't worth anything or move too slowly.

Since I was in the midst of parting out the Mercedes, I let a wrecked 2005 MR2 Spyder go by for cheap (covered on page 2 on this thread). This has worked out well and been a learning experience, but if I go to part another car I would probably go for another one of those. Or something else that I would be more enthused about, like a Boxster, Miata, Mustang or similar fun car.

I was doing some shop clean-up a couple months back and decided to scrap out all the rest of the Mercedes parts. There were a few items that were valuable in terms of listing price, but they just didn't sell. That's OK - I made out OK and now I have my shelves back. I certainly didn't intend the part-out to result in some parts remaining nearly 4 years later but I didn't need the space until now. I made one more sale since my last total update, so here's our final numbers:

Purchase price incl fees    2428
Towing    62
eBay fees    $832.20
Total costs    3322.2
Parts sales    9844
Net    6521.8

Some good lessons in this one; number one is that relatively rare enthusiast cars do way better on part-outs because there's just so much less competition from other sellers combined with the buyers being more DIY types. Another is to be extra careful of adding up recent sales and using that as gospel. When there are so many of a specific part for sale you have to be exceptional somehow to actually sell your part. That could be a number of things but primarily it's price. You need to be the cheapest at exactly the same moment as someone is shopping for the part. That's not a market I'm excited to be part of.

I have so much going on in my life that I'm unlikely to do any more part-outs for a while. I had a couple opportunities but I ended up selling one as-is and repairing and selling the other one. That went great given the current crazy car market.

Still, I probably have 80 hours of work or so in this part-out, and made $6500. $81.25/hr for a hobby. That's not bad. Discounting, of course, the cost of the shelf space in the shop which would be there anyway.

I need to part out a v8 w108 and I mentioned it one time on a Mercedes forum that I will be parting a 4.5 w108 in the next year or so and my pm blew up. Also, I parted a 88 560SEC years ago, I made a ton of money on it.