Originally I started by trying to sell my 280SE privately.   However, I had the issue that I have a fair amount of work travel in the first part of the year, and a fairly busy work and family schedule at other times.    I missed out on a couple of buyers because they purchased something else before I could even show them the car.

As I was just about to embark on a 3 week work trip, I enquired about various auction options.  As the car was in good shape and fairly original, plus a desirable colour I thought it would probably do reasonably well.

Potential buyers could go and look at the car at the auction house and then make a decision to bid or not.

Based on that, I considered a number of different auction providers:

• Shannons
• Lloyds
• Grays
• Collecting Cars

At the time, I didn’t really think about Trading Garage or Burns and Co.  I probably should have.

I quickly ruled out Grays and Collecting Cars.   The impression I have of Grays is that it is the place that people dump cars they can’t otherwise sell.   I’ve also had stories from friends about the quality of the cars they had purchased from Grays.   Given my car was a very nice original car, I didn’t think it was a good fit.

I also didn’t think the commercial model worked well with Collecting Cars.   The minimum buyers premium is $1,000.   This is an exorbitant amount of money for a car I expected to sell for around $10,000.  I wouldn’t bid on a car unless I was getting it cheap as chips as I would feel I’m being ripped off.  It might work well for cars at the $40-$50,000 range, but at that point I think the high value stuff goes through other auction houses anyway.   Plus each auction runs in its own time so you don’t get the marketing impact of a regular auction date at a well publicized auction house.

That left Lloyds and Shannons.   I went with Shannons because I felt they have the reputation as the auction house where the nice cars go through.   They generally do good descriptions and take high resolution photos plus the mechanical report.   The Lloyds descriptions are often one sentence and the photos are quite low resolution.     I can’t remember the exact numbers but the fees were fairly comparable.

I also chose to go with a no reserve auction.   I felt the exposure I would get through Shannons would give me enough exposure I would get a good market price.   While I was hoping for $10,000, I felt I would easily get $8,000 if things went badly.    I think reserve auctions put off buyers at the cheaper end of the market.   The fees are much higher.

The sign up process was pretty easy and the Shannons employee I worked with was really helpful and was genuinely interested in the car and appreciated it.    The showroom is in St Leonards which is reasonably simple for me to get to.  I was able to drop off the car on the way to the city one day.

Once the car was there, Shannons took some very good high resolution photos of the car.   The only criticism is that their watermark covers the middle of the photos, meaning it can he hard to zoom in and look at the details.   They also do a mechanical report, which I think is a useful thing for bidders.  I thought their report was reasonably fair, although like a 280SEL they had a previous auction, they noted the car as down on performance.  I don’t think it actually was and they were comparing it to a non ADR27A car.   ADR27A had a big impact on the performance of the M110.

Shannons don’t do an in person Auction anymore.   The lots go live and bidding is open for a week.   Like most Auctions, most of the bidding happens in the last 10 minutes or so that the lot is live.    I normally find a general rule of thumb on these type of auctions is that the bid level will double in the last day of the auction.

The collector car market has really softened in the last 6 months or so.   I went into the last day at $4100.   This was below where I wanted to be, but not fatal.   While my overall goal was to get a figure that would net me $10,000, I felt $8,000 while disappointing would at least be a tolerable result.

Some of the early auctions were doing quite well – then something happened that would change everything.    The Shannons main website went down.   This was a little after 6pm.    It would remain down for the rest of the evening.

During this whole time, the Auction site was unaffected.   The issue is that many people get to the auction site via the main website.    I don’t know how many people this impacted, but certainly the lots that were scheduled for later in the evening had pretty poor results – worse than the ones scheduled earlier.    In the end, I managed to scrape a result of $6,400.   I hardly had any bidding right at the end.

I wasn’t alone.   There were other cars going to equally low numbers around the time of mine.   A great example was a rough R107 that went for $6,800.   The car was rough, but that is a particularly low result.   Neither of the Pagoda SLs got good numbers, and they are normally very popular cars.   The W126 280SE couldn’t get any bids at all.

Shannons had one job to do that night.  Keep their IT infrastructure up.   A short outage of 10-15 minutes would have been inconsequential.   But the hours long outage had a major impact.    While the market is down, and I didn’t expect to get a number in the mid to high end of the guiding range, I felt my personal guiding range of $8-$11,000 was reasonable.

A great contrast was another 280SE sold by grays a couple of weeks earlier.   This is a good comparison as both cars are sold under the same market conditions.    The grays car actually got a slightly higher hammer price than mine, but there was a big gulf between the two cars.   For example, compared to my car, the grays car was:

• In materially worse condition, with various dents and scratches on the body work
• A 1974 D-Jet car vs a 1979 K-Jet car.
• Poorly optioned (no sunroof, crank windows)
• Sold on grays vs Shannons

I pointed this out to Shannons and they agreed to waive the 7% commission.   This puts me at an equivalent hammer price of around $6,850.   Better, but I don’t think a realistic representation.

I think this outage cost me $1,000-$3,000.   Based on my experience here, I won’t be sending another car to a Shannons auction.   The front end process may be good, but if they can’t do the basics of keeping the IT infrastructure up on the night of the Auction, what is the point?

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Even though nothing really grabbed my at this auction it is always well worth going and taking a look around.    Much of the stock were muscle cars, some Aussie some American.

The cars that did interest me the most were:

 1934 Hudson Straight 8

I know little about these cars but it has loads of character and looks like it is in nice condition.    They expect $40-$50,000.

1950 Armstrong Siddeley Whitley Sports Sedan

I know little about these either and it looks more stately than sporty, but it caught my eye.

1958 Jaguar XK150 FHC

I like XK jaguar FHCs but this one didn’t really catch my eye.   While I prefer the 140, 150s can be striking too, but I don’t think cream suits the car at all.   I also didn’t particularly like the extra console in the dash.    The $75-$90,000 price seems right though.

1960 Mercedes 190SL

190SL values have gone stratospheric in the  last couple of years and they have attracted a whole new set of buyers, generally younger than the normal classic car buyer.   They a stunning car to look at, but I still feel they are overpriced and will always be in the shadow of the 300SL.

This car is in quite nice condition, although the white paint behind the Mercedes star looks very odd.   The interior is worn, but in a good way.   Generally the car is in nice condition and while I think they are overpriced it will probably go for what they suggest $140-$150k.

The post 2016 Shannons Sydney Late Autumn Classic Auction appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

Frothy markets are not good for the classic car hobby.   Massively inflated prices brings in non-enthusiasts who just buy the cars for their value, and never drive them or show them.  Instead, they sit mouldering away in storage for years until that individual wants to sell it on.   Even for enthusiasts, the cars get to a point where they are no longer driven because of their perceived value.  This is a shame.

It is good for rare cars to have some level of value so they are saved and not scrapped, but boom and bust markets are no good for anyone.

The post How long can the classic car market sustain $200k Kombi Vans? appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

The first was a W111 Convertible – A manual 220SE.   The car looked nice from the photos and the price range seemed a bit low to me.  ($54,000-$60,000).

The car is nice for that price – I would rate it at a nice driver condition – the leather is a bit worn and has a few tears, the wood needs refinishing and the paint is not perfect, but that means this is a car you can use regularly.   I wasn’t able to see the engine, hear it or see the condition of the soft top, but overall it looks like a nice car for the money.   It is fairly original with the original wheels and hubcaps (these are frequently changed to the 280 style), and a becker radio, albeit from a newer car.

The manual transmission is most commonly found on the 220, but even still is not common.   The blue with cream lether is also a nice colour combination – too many of these cars are white.

Another car I liked was a R107 500SL.   To me, the 500 is the one to get.   the 560 with its embellishments (3rd brake light, rear wing, front spoiler etc) looks like an aging actress with a bit too much plastic surgery, but the 500SL, not having to comply with misguided ADR27A regulations is more powerful than the 560, lighter, and still retails the classic look of the 107SL.   Price guide is $10,000-$15,000 with no reserve.  A couple of small rust bubbles could be seen, but otherwise the car looked quite nice.

The other car I particularly wanted to see was the Series 1.5 E-Type.   Towards the end of Series 1 production, Jaguar started introducing some of the upcoming changes for Series 2 (in the 1967 model year).   These didn’t happen at the same time, so the Series 1.5 is interesting, as cars from different parts of the year can be different.   Series 1.5 changes started with the elimination of the covered headlights (albeit differently to S2), change from flat to ribbed cam covers, change from toggle switches to rocker, interior door handles, and for the USA, from triple SU carburettors to dual Solex.   This car has the open lights, and ribbed cam covers, but not the interior changes.     Price guide was $110,000 to $125,000, and the car was an original RHD model.  The car is apparently from South Africa originally, and must have been in fairly long term ownership as it was not on XKEdata.com.

The post 2014 Shannons Sydney Late Autumn Classic Auction appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

Somebody got a bargain on a massive Caddie, and there was a nice red Mercedes 280/8 that went for pretty big money for a W114.     There was also a Ferrari Mondial that did not even get a starting bid, even though there was a man in attendance who looked like a wanna-be investment banker who surely was a shoe-in?

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