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Smart Shopper Buying and Selling Vehicles Online (eBay, etc.)
225 messages, Last post on Sep 24, 2009 at 8:13 AM
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| Not that you'd have this problem buying from a dealer on ebay, but there have been quite a few stories lately about nasty ebay (and other auction site) fraud going on for the higher-priced items (like cars). No way I'm spending $30K without physically inspecting the car first... | |
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I have been doing a lot of bidding on ebay in the last month. The downside is that you are bidding against other people which ususally drives the price up. The upside is that you get a much better choice than you will locally. I am looking for a Lexus, at any one time there are 80-100 LS 400s for sale. If Packards are you thing then there are usually 14 for sale. The selection is unbelievable. You will never find that locally, unless you live in LA or NYC. There are a lot of excellent cars with very low miles out there. Recently there was a pefect '90 Lexus LS 400 with only 77K miles (5500 miles a year!!!). It went for $8100!! That bidder didn't get a deal but he got an incredible car. If i have to pay a few hundred more on ebay and get the exact car i want with low miles, I don't mind driving 5-600 miles to pick it up. I recently drove to Augusta GA to look at a Toyota Land Cruiser that a friend was going to buy. While we were there we stopped at the local Lexus dealer in Martinez. They had a '96 LS 400 with only 51K miles that had a perfect interior. Unfortunately it was an ugly exterior color. They wanted $19,999 for it. When we got back that evening I got on ebay and there was the same car with a "Buy It Now" price of $21,995. Won't be doing business with them. There is quite a bit of shill bidding going on also. The key is to buy from poeple who have high seller feedback ratings (over 98%). And buy from the people who give a lot of detail and show a lot of pics. Especially look at the front seat wear. Call a dealership with the vin# and get the service history of the car. Lastly if you are the high bidder but did not meet the reserve price the seller will contact you to ask if you will buy if for X price. |
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Prices are usually very high on Ebay. That '90 Lexus is $1,000 over top retail, even with the low miles. But, as you say, what Ebay does offer is selection. I think I could find a low miles Lexus where I live, in the Bay Area, but people in other places would be hard put to find that car, so maybe "convenience" is worth paying over retail? On the other hand, buying a car you can't see is scary. People lie like rugs on Ebay, and what you see with a digital camera is hardly the "truth". Another problem is that if you have a squabble with a seller with a car you buy out of state, you might have to take legal action in the state of sale, not in your state---and that is an extra hassle and expense. I've sold on Ebay very successfully but wouldn't buy on Ebay without a thorough real life inspection. I tried twice and both cars were conspicuously misrepresented. So that kind of reveals my point of view. I think there are righteous sellers, however. My friend picked up a very nice car recently, (Jeep Wrangler) but it was inspected beforehand. |
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| The best thing about eBay are the photos of the cars. Often you see detailed photographs of dream cars unmatched by any magazine review. If some hot new exotic car comes out and I really want to take a good look at it, I don't go and buy the latest issue of Car and Driver. I don't surf over to edmunds.com. I go to eBay and window-shop the ads. | |
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As a few folks here have already pointed out, there are many times that the bidding on something like a car can get out of hand. However, I have seen the occasional odd car go for an absolute steal on there and just wish I had been the one to get it. I've never seen it with anything new or even a few years old. Its usually the 10 or 15 or 20 year old garage queen with low miles that, for some reason, gets overlooked. Just this past summer I saw a real nice 1984 RX7 GSL-SE (pretty rare find - i think it was in washington or oregon) with no rust, low miles, and not even a tear in the leather and it went for what I thought was a REAL low number (wish I could remember what that was - i only remember wishing i had a job at the time and could spend the money on a toy like that). Also saw a mid-60s showcar (really blanking on this one cause it was a car I never heard of, but it was beautiful) that had less than 10K miles and was seriously like looking at something sitting on the dealer showroom floor in the 60s. It didn't sell. Problem was it was a straight six version instead of the V8. Again, though, if I had the money at that moment, I would have gladly bought that car. So it takes some patience and probably even some flexibility as to what you want to buy, but the deals do exist on there. It might be just someone like me who is willing to give a home to one of a thousand different makes and models from the past 40 years that this applies to, but at least it works to some extent. |
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Well, easy to explain. A 1984 RX7 isn't worth anything, that's why the price was low. It's a $1,000 car all day long. My old Benz diesel for instance, is worth what it's worth (not much). To someone, getting a very clean old Benz for $1,250 is a "steal", but that's what the market is. so what I"m saying is that if some cars are bargains on Ebay, it isn't because of Ebay, it's because the cars are bargains no matter where you sell them. But yes, you might not FIND those bargains elsewhere so easily, you're right about that. Ebay is driven by supply and demand just like any other market, with the added externality of bidder competition driving prices up I think. Really you'd have to see the car in person to know if it were a "steal" or not. You simply can't tell from the photos, it's very tricky. Is a clean low mileage WHATEVER a steal if the transmission acts real funny when you get it delivered to your house? Or if that digital camera hid the brush marks in the paint?
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I knew i could count on you to say that about the rx7, shifty. But, as you also pointed out, try to find it anywhere else. Its not going to happen. There are certain cars that there is just no "book" on. The price is what you are willing to pay for it. Regardless, watch what RX7s sell for on there and you'd know this particular one was, in fact, a real bargain based on what others have paid for worse examples. I've seen earlier RX7s in not great shape go for more. Of course, this brings up the whole "market" issue. On one hand, someone like you looks at that car and thinks it ain't worth much (it definitely went for more than $1K). But if several others think it is.... well, then, that's what its worth, isn't it? Same with any car. People pay more for a 2-year-old bimmer than I would ever fork over for it, but just because i don't think its worth it doesn't mean the market won't bear it. The rx is only a $1K car to YOU. But since a dozen other people who saw it were willing to pay more, than its obviously worth more than your assessment on the open market. And considering I thought it was still a steal beyond the price paid, then it is worth more still because folks are willing to pay it. oh, and i do agree about wanting to see the car. I'd be hard pressed to buy a car sight unseen. Not so much because I don't trust people (especially since i'd only do that with someone who had immaculate feedback well into the triple digits) but because I don't trust that they necessarily know what to look for. |
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Well, I haven't seen the particular RX-7 sold on Ebay so I can't appraise it. All I'm passing on is the information that old RX-7s are generally very low dollar cars, so one should be careful about assessing their sale as "a steal". Could be the only theft going on is on the part of the seller. He may have made out like a bandit. Good for him. Could be, too, that the buyer could never resell at that price. The problem here, which comes up all the time in understanding used car values, is that one sale on Ebay doesn't set the market for old RX-7s. All it proves is on that day that one car sold for more than book value. Fair enough. I just saw a beautiful, drop dead gorgeous 1980 Porsche 928 for sale, (today) all records, $20,000 spend recently on mechanicals, two-owner, bright red paint, a virtual supercar for.......$5,500. A steal? Nope, that's what it's worth. But the "outsider" to Porsche values would probably gasp in disbelief that so much car could be had for so little money. So what's the catch with bargain RX-7s and 928s? Why are they so cheap? Because so few people want them, basically. Another problem with auctions, either live or Ebay, is that the auction "drama" or "competition" tends to drive up the price beyond the normal pressures of supply and demand. So you get a couple bidders getting really hungry for the car and they whip each other into a bidding frenzy and pay over book for something. This doesn't mean they were "ripped" by any means, if they got what they wanted and what they expected. Maybe they paid too much but it's their money, so what's the argument? |
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but how do you put a "worth" or even a "market" on something that there is no comparison for? That 928 you speak of, for instance, have you seen another with $20K invested and in such beautiful shape sell for $5500 recently? something like that is worth what someone is willing to pay. That's the definition of "market." The market is what folks are paying. And you can't say someone paid too much without a basis of comparison. If you could pull up 10 other sales of 928s in perfect shape with $20K invested over the past 2 or 3 months and say "ok, so they all sold for an average of $5K-$6K", then there is your market and value. Since you can't do that, then there is no true value or worth that we can determine other than what someone pays. The one thing you can learn from ebay is that more than one person was willing to pay that price or somewhere very near it. in a private sale or dealer sale, a price is agreed upon. That doesn't tell you much. ESPECIALLY when its something that there is no match for on the market. I can't look through autotrader or the local paper and find even one example, let alone several, of that 928 to tell me what I truly should be paying for it. But on ebay, or any auction environment, the price was set through a bidding process. So at least one other person was willing to pay $5450 for that 928. i do agree with you about the heat of auctions, however. I go to auctions quite often with my wife (mostly for antiques and furniture, but the occasional car comes up) and sometimes you just have to laugh at people. |
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I bought a 95 Miata on Ebay. Great car, but like shifty said, it wasn't quite in the condition the seller said it was. It wasn't trashed in any way, but things were a little off. He said new tires, I felt I needed to replace them right away. The car needed new brake pads. The top was a little more weathered than stated as well, but that was about it. Still a decent car for the money though. Would I do it again? Probably not. Although, has anyone heard of, or used those car inspection services that will go check out a car for you in a location far away? If those services are legit I would consider ebay again. Of course I only used ebay back then because I was living in such a small town that it was hard to find the exact car I was looking for. Now that I am in LA I doubt I will need ebay unless I am buying something super rare. The classified section here is like a used car superstore. |
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