Out of curiosity - what's my GN worth?

[Meg's Dad]

87chriss,

Funny thing is, a lot of folks come on looking for a stock, unmolested car. Then, inveritably, you see a post a few weeks later by the same person saying "I just picked up a mint TR, fresh out of the wrapper! I have a race against John Force in his Space Shuttle next week, what do I need to do to my car to beat him?"

Fracton of the investment is what you get out of nearly every car, even those that wealthy people car afford. There are a ton of cars with $200,000 in them that sell for half that. Maybe someday soon I can scoop up Black '68 Charger with about $100k in it for about half that. Hey, gotta have a plan, right?


Regards,
John

 

[horndog]

It's a buyers market and if you are patient you will get a hell of a deal. Come spring it may swing to a sellers market and the closer these cars hit 30 yrs old that is when collector cars really start to upswing.

You need to do you due diligence on what you want and you can control the price.

I got lucky, granted I spent more than I wanted to, but I bought from a local Buick pro and he is just a phone call away which plays Huge for me as I am a novice to these cars.




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[BuickMike]

There are a ton of people who come up to me and love the car. They talk about how they loved them in highschool and always wanted one. All these people are in their mid 40's. None of them are in a position to spend any big bucks on a midlife crisis car yet. I'll bet 10 years from now our cars will start coming up in price. They will probably hit their peak 15-20 years from now.

 

[charlief1]

The catch is selling price VS "value" price Mike. When I got my 83T NADA had it listed about $8K and I figured that doing as much work myself would keep me behind the curve. Well so far it has since NADA now lists it at $12K and Haggerty has it at $19K. The less there are of something the more the cost of ownership goes up and there are still a bunch out there. As they get fewer and fewer the the price will go up. My first car was almost a 68 Dodge Coronet but my dad had a fit. My parents were people that were very practical and never really admired any car that didn't have 4 doors and get decent mileage. No real hobbies and could never understand what my fascination with cars was. If they were still alive today they'd be saying something about how I waste my time and money, but I digress. The market will come back but it will take a while. I figure in another 5 to 10 years you're going to see the prices go up quite a bit and maybe even see the GNX price hit the levels of a Yenko or something like it.

 

[BuickMike]

I initially figured my car would be worth $25k or so in today's market, but after looking at what some of the cars have been going for lately, I'm thinking it would only fetch $17k or so. I created this thread to see if what I was seeing was correct. I'm glad I was able to do most of the work on the car myself. If I just handed it over to someone, I probably would have $40K wrapped up in it...maybe more. I have less than half of that put into the entire build, which is motor, trans, rear end, every last bushing, frame-off, repainted everything, all new suspension.....you get it. My wife wishes I could sell it because lately all it has done is piss me off. Hopefully I can get the last of the bugs worked out and enjoy it for 10 years or so.

 

[TurboDave]

What kind of bugs are you plagued with?

 

[Meg's Dad]

Mike, put the car in the corner of the garage for a couple of months and focus on something else. Your journey has been so long and you've devoted so much time/attention into making a beautiful car, that you just need some time away. If you don't need the money, don't sell it.

Regards,
John

 

[BuickMike]

My biggest problem has been the countless hours I spent trying to get the Metro window seals to work before giving up and buying NOS stuff. I'm still having a few issues with wind noise, but I think it is coming from my Metro lower door seals . It also seems like I can't take the damn car out without something going wrong...radiator fan issue, AC issue, and the last thing that happened was me getting a hairline crack in my alky tank. $80 later I have that fixed. I guess I've lost a lot of patience with the car and just want it to be trouble free for at least a few months. That has been compounded by me having an old Honda CRX as a DD and constantly fixing that too. The parts store parts quality for that car are worse than anything else I've experienced. I was constantly swapping out warranty parts. Working 2 jobs and dealing with all this was way too much for me to handle. I decided to sell the CRX and buy a brand new DD. My patience is getting better.

 

[BuickMike]

Again, there is no way I would sell the GN unless someone shoved enough money in my face that I would make a decent profit on it. I've already shoved it in the corner of the garage. It looks pretty there, but I am sick of looking at it. I want to drive it! I'm going to put in my new alky tank on it tonight and work on fixing the tune. It is perfect cruising weather here, so I don't need to worry about the seals not being perfect since it is windows down weather.

 

[TurboDave]

Sorry to hear about your door seal issues. I just installed a set of Metro Super Soft seals on mine and everything turned out perfect. Thought I was going to have to make a lot of window glass adjustments but as it turns out I don't. I had gone to the trouble of removing the window seal channels, and spending hours cleaning each of them out before installing the new seals. The windows at first didn't want to close completely up against the new seals but I found a solution for that. I powered the windows all the way up with the doors open, then closed the doors tight and left the car sit for at least a week. Now the seals have a similar indentation from the windows that the factory seals left.

 

[BuickMike]

T top cars complicate things. Also, I'm assuming mine are Metro. They may be who knows what, but I'm not going to get into that discussion .

 

[BuickMike]

Wow, I actually made it out for a drive without any major complications. I celebrated by doing a huge John Force burnout . Now 1/2 of my DR's are gone haha. Hopefully I can focus on taking care of some of the little things on the car now.

 

[turbo39151]

I saw this post a few days ago and a similar one as well and it had me thinking...I have been wondering about the current state of the "car" market.
I've recently seen the fantasy auctions (Barrett Jackson, Mecum, etc.) starting to get the bigger numbers again for some of the muscle cars and I've noticed my real property values appreciating albeit slowly.
However, I've wondered why the turbo buicks just seem to lag behind.

I've been contemplating selling both my Buicks as well as a bunch of other stuff in order to thin the herd. I'm planning on moving soon and really don't want the hassle of dragging tons of stuff across the country. Like most of us here, I am up to my eyeballs into these cars. I know I'll never re-coup what I have into them but I just can't see "giving them away" with what some people seem to be selling for these days. I think low $20's would be ideal (and still losing money) but even lowering my expectations into the high teens still gets me blank stares.

Besides the usual predictions of 5-10 years in the future, does anyone foresee an uptick anytime soon?

 

[horndog]

The TTAs have taken a huge hit lately and some can't give them away. The TRs have seem to Lost general audience interest. I don't know if it is economy related or if it is just cyclical


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[turbo39151]

That's unfortunate. I like the TTA's as well.
It figures that buyers markets always come around when I have no cash.

 

[jlat]

hello people; Anything that's sold is worth whatever some one is willing to spend. Seems time and money are related but time is somthing that is hard to justify. If it was me I'd ch. the cars for sale sites and go from there. But there are some real scams out there so don't believe everything unless you can touch and feel it.
IBBY

 

[turbo39151]

I check various sites periodically to keep abreast of the market but recently I got a wild hair and thought I might not want to sell just one car but, rather I might want to get out of Buicks completely selling my cars and hoarded parts.

The problem has been that there's tons of cars for sale and buyers only see the cheap price (they forget about all the other issues) and then compare the cheap price cars to the higher price cars- opting to either lowball a seller of a higher priced car or to eventually pass and buy the cheaper car.

Heck, I like a good deal as much as the next guy but, I'm not interested in losing my shirt.
I really don't want to sell but I rarely drive the cars and with an imminent move, it becomes a logistical hassle (not to mention the cost of transporting multiple cars)

 

[psycho6cyl]

short term market is not there for our cars. i don't know if it'll be there for long term either excluding gnx naturally. i just think these cars have that wows factor for ppl buying them. the market is turning up but lets face it a clean gn and a rusted out chevelle for same price 99% are going towards the chevelle. good news is we won't lose value on our cars. they have def maintained and increased but not by much. i hope i don't have to sell my car but if i did i km not expecting much even though i know whats it worth but not every one is a buick guy or a tr guy..

 

[psycho6cyl]

give me ya stash of parts and ill drive/move the cars for ya lol

 

[turbo39151]

^^ I agree. It's kind of a bummer though. I really don't have the time to wait and see.
My stash of parts fills the garage. (When I last moved, my garage filled most of the full size moving truck.) It's a lot of stuff.
In the event that I sell my cars, I'll probably be posting all the parts shortly thereafter.