Posted by David Sherman on Tuesday, November 13, 2007 at 13:47:45 :
In Reply to: 1953 Dodge Pw for sale on craigslist. Ranting posted by Bill on Tuesday, November 13, 2007 at 10:56:42 :
I don't know the truck, but if he's asking 23K on craig's and 25K here for a truck that's not worth over 10K (if such it is), does it really make any difference? I've known a lot of people who had vehicles, houses, and land "for sale" pretty much forever at unrealistic prices. There are certain people who like the attention of having people call them about something they have for sale even though they have no intention of selling it, or they take some sadistic pleasure in telling prospective buyers that if they can't get 25K (or whatever) for the truck, they'll crush it. These people are parasites, contributing nothing good to society, but they've probably been around forever and they're best ignored. I watch just about every PW anybody finds on ebay, and I'd say half of them don't sell.
The thing that makes PWs popular right now is that they're 50 years old, which is the prime age for old vehicles. Guys old enough to have fond memories of them from their youths are now making enough money to afford to buy them for fun. In another 10 years, it'll be the 60s trucks. I already have young guys telling me what a cool old truck my grandpa's 67 chevy 1/2 ton is, and I remember when he bought it new. Once the people who remember them from their youth die off, they won't be nearly so valuable, except for a few never-driven museum pieces. Look at the prices of old pre-war fords and chevies that aren't show-winners. They haven't gone up at all in recent years. You can get a drivable model A pretty reasonable considering how old it is.
I didn't know that hit-n-miss engines had suddenly become a new craze, but I'm sure it'll run its course. I suspect it's like old tube radio gear. I like any sort of tube-powered electronics, but when I go to the ham fairs, all the old ham radio gear and the old consumer radios, if not meticulously restored, go for boat-anchor prices. There was a brief spike in the price of tubes when ebay started up, but that's over now, except for "audiophile" tubes. The sad but unavoidable fact is that the hams and old radio guys are getting real old and there aren't any young guys interested in working with the old equipment. Sometimes an antique dealer will buy the old consumer radios from an estate sale and sell them even though they don't work, but even they don't want the ham gear. If a younger generation has taken up hit-n-miss engines, then I guess we'll live with high prices for a while. Are they into steam engines too? It seemed to me that steam was pretty much an old man's hobby at this point. I have two steam engines with boilers that I haven't done anything with yet, that I think I paid around $500 apiece for, which didn't seem unreasonable.
Basically, if you're into a hobby that lots of other people are into as well, there's naturally going to be some competition and high prices. If you pick something not very many people are into, prices are cheap to free, but you lose the coolness factor. The only part that's a sad commentary on our society is that coolness seems to be directly related to cost. If it's expensive, people think it's cool (and desirable), and if it's cheap, they think it must not be cool. Why does a good shootable M1 Garand rifle go for $800, and a Mosin-Nagant that shoots just about the same size bullet at the same speed with the same accuracy cost $70 mail-order? Coolness. When "war surplus" jeeps and trucks were $100, nobody thought they were cool. People bought them by the dozen, hacked them up, made them into bulldozers, saw mills, tractors, shop cranes, etc. Now they're cool, and we think it's a crime when we find one that's been butchered up, especially when the grandson of the guy who bought it for $100 in 1950 has it on ebay for $5000 non-running.
I don't know the answer. Maybe it's a sign of a prosperous economy. A lot of people seem think they're sitting on a gold mine these days, either in land or trucks. If we get into another 1930s situation, priorities are gonna change. To a hungry man who has to choose, a sack of potatoes is going to be a better choice than an NOS headlight knob for the PW he was restoring.
Well, that's enough of a rant from me.
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