An old friend on BaT, @HB Chris’ former 73 Malaga e9
- Thread starter JMinPDX
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It's a tactic. People who may have remained engaged leave and as we saw, nobody there at the end. I have seen it work more than once
ElGrecko
Well-Known Member
Great car but unfortunately the market is what it is. I don't think the market is down 30% from 2022 but as we boomers age we aren't looking to buy anymore, we're looking to thin the herd and not leave a bunch of stuff our kids don't want. Being a pilot and watching that market too we've seen a big drop in the value of high performance single engine retractable gear planes whose boomer owners are losing their medicals and the market has moved to LSA's even though they don't have the usability and legs of a high performance plane. They young folks don't have the disposable income to afford a plane like that. I sold mine too soon, so my market timing isn't very good. While the E9 is timeless it's not the car that was on the picture young and middle age folks had on their wall when there were 12 years old. We don't have a lot of interest in brass era cars or even early 50's cars because the cars we grew up with and were on our bucket list are cars like the E9. Later kids had pics of a Countach or an M3 and while they appreciate a E9 they don't have the disposable income that the boomers had and for reasonable sum you can buy a nice E30 M3 for under $40k and is a lot more modern than an E9. A declining market scares away potential byers as we can rationalize buying a car like this if we think we aren't going to lose a ton of money (or actually see some appreciation) and have something we will enjoy. Even though us boomers still lust after a nice E9 it's hard to justify putting over 100k into a declining asset.
Interesting. I suppose I get the tactic, but on the other hand for a car that sold a few years ago for $140 you'd think any potential buyer knows it ain't happening for $90, so why not just at least set the floor and go from there.
It takes two to tango in these auctions generally, and there was one in the room at closing time. Really sorry we did not get to see two at the table here. This is really a benchmark car, and I am sure we all would have liked to see a dog fight to the true value of the car. It is absolutely worth more than 100K, just not today.
If the $100K bidder tried to scare others away he didn’t follow up with another bid but maybe he knows the seller and was trying to get the bidding going but still pretty strange.
I thought it would at least get to $125K as this Malaga coupe did just two months ago. The April car had 1800 watchers and 58 bids. Chris' ex-coupe had 1300 watchers and 4 bids. Strange 
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mkent
Well-Known Member
I would think that serious buyers who (1) have reasonable knowledge about E9 coupes, (2) have followed the E9 market, and (3) recognize an exceptional example such as this Malaga would have an idea of what it would take to own it.
As previously stated, I just don't think they were in the room today.
As previously stated, I just don't think they were in the room today.
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I doubt this had much to do with it but I didn’t get notified by BaT that this was for sale. And it’s listed under E9. This has happened to me before. I’m sure a lot of you guys have notifications set on all kinds of cars. Has something like that ever happened to you? The Polaris for sale right now came up like normal.
Curious if anyone else ran into the same issue on this auction. It is extremely rare to get one big bid increase on day one at a low end bid really at that and not see any more movement especially being alumni and all the previous comments plus that it was Chris’s personal car and labor of love and perfection for years.
Very strange indeed. Head scratcher. I thought it would break previous sale price. Market for coupes is down a bit but not for the high end ones like this. Until now I guess. Glad this didn’t happen to Chris when he owned it. That would have been really weird. IDK?
Curious if anyone else ran into the same issue on this auction. It is extremely rare to get one big bid increase on day one at a low end bid really at that and not see any more movement especially being alumni and all the previous comments plus that it was Chris’s personal car and labor of love and perfection for years.
Very strange indeed. Head scratcher. I thought it would break previous sale price. Market for coupes is down a bit but not for the high end ones like this. Until now I guess. Glad this didn’t happen to Chris when he owned it. That would have been really weird. IDK?
I talked to the seller since I had gone to see the car. They will likely hold on to the car for a bit and then relist. Hopefully if does better next time around. I would say just “market is down” but then I see repro Ferraris going for 1.6M so…
It's like the stock market, just when you think it is ziggin', it starts zaggin'. I stopped trying to figure it out a while ago thinking I know more than AI, people writing the Algorithms, insider info (i.e. - when Nancy Pelosi becomes the world's best stock picker you know something is wrong), geopolitics, micro and macro economics, etc.
I just stick to a plan until there are no more chairs left, then I am hedged if that happens too. So, yeah, BaT is a head scratcher sometimes, there is an explanation for pretty much everything, but a lot of times I am the last one to get the memo, only more TPS reports, red staplers, and corner basement offices. It's only a fraction of a penny from the crippled children....right? Nothing to see here folks! Move along now...
I just stick to a plan until there are no more chairs left, then I am hedged if that happens too. So, yeah, BaT is a head scratcher sometimes, there is an explanation for pretty much everything, but a lot of times I am the last one to get the memo, only more TPS reports, red staplers, and corner basement offices. It's only a fraction of a penny from the crippled children....right? Nothing to see here folks! Move along now...
Yes - it has happened to me several times... Not recently, but in the past (for both E39 M5's & R129's).
One of my favorite movies! Might have to watch it this weekend!
BaT has grown so much, I wonder if a car Iike this is getting lost in the shuffle of its massive inventory.
I just stopped by my local Porsche dealer, and they are absolutely overloaded with Porsche inventory. They have 98 new and 125 used Porsches on the lot—in Fort Myers. This isn’t some big dealer in SoCal. Something is wrong.
I think sellers may outnumber buyers at the moment.
Lastly, I bet if the seller shipped the car down to Chris for him to auction it, it woood so much better. Location matters, and California is still the Mecca for vintage BMWs.
I just stopped by my local Porsche dealer, and they are absolutely overloaded with Porsche inventory. They have 98 new and 125 used Porsches on the lot—in Fort Myers. This isn’t some big dealer in SoCal. Something is wrong.
I think sellers may outnumber buyers at the moment.
Lastly, I bet if the seller shipped the car down to Chris for him to auction it, it woood so much better. Location matters, and California is still the Mecca for vintage BMWs.
your Ft Myers Porsche dealer sells a lot of cars on the internet. a friend of mine bought a 911 4s in 2017 new and got a much better price than he could in Atlanta, even with shipping he saved around 10k ... on a 125k car. the big issue for Porsche is that the used market for sports cars is quite strong. partially because the price of the new sports cars has jumped dramatically over the past few years. Porsche sells so many more Macans, Cayennes + Panameras than they do 911 (all variants) and boxster / caymans. i think in the not-too-distant future, Porsche will scale down the quantity of variants ... last i knew there were 11 different 911s and in some years a few more. the biggest issue for Porsche is the dealer model that now charges $250 / hr for basic service ... specialized service is even more.
that being said, the curiosity will be how much longer Porsche continues to support the old sports cars - parts wise ... or will they quit manufacturing the parts and let the secondary market take care of them. my guess is they will continue to for a while
that being said, the curiosity will be how much longer Porsche continues to support the old sports cars - parts wise ... or will they quit manufacturing the parts and let the secondary market take care of them. my guess is they will continue to for a while
ElGrecko
Well-Known Member
One of my best friends worked the parts counter at German Motors in WPB Fla when we were in HS... He joked that everyone pronounced Porsche incorrectly... He said the proper pronunciation was POORSHIT... That was because he would say "you POORSHIT, do you know how much that's going to cost?" when people came in to buy parts. The margins on Porsche parts were crazy 60 years ago and still are. BMW learned their spare parts pricing policy from Porsche, and as long as the margins are as high as they are they'll keep providing parts.