An old friend on BaT, @HB Chris’ former 73 Malaga e9
- Thread starter JMinPDX
- Start date
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…