Minivansomeren
Well-Known Member
When I was looking for a coupe, I made a spreadsheet tracking the cars sold on BaT. I excluded CSLs, and also cars that had “project” in the title, in an attempt to remove outliers. Now that the year is ending, I’ve updated the data.
For 2025 the average highest bid was $59K with a median of $55. This includes high bids on cars that did not meet reserve, since I am mostly interested in what the market is willing to pay. If we look even closer, quarter 1 saw a mean/median of $61.1/58.8, which was flat in Q2 ($60.7/60), had a big drop in Q3 ($47/39.5) and a recovery in Q4 ($75/66) thanks to some decent cars from big-name sellers doing very well. However I think the volume might be too low and the noise too high to make looking at quarterly data really useful.
Those yearly values of $59 and $55 are down significantly from last year, which had an average of $74.1 and median of $73, and down further from the height of the market in 2021, which had an average of $95.3 and median of $78. This tracks with Hagerty’s data for the collector market in general, which shows peaks around 2021/22 and subsequent declines, both in the “heat” of the market (I think this is volume and the number of cars beating reserve) as well as the index of values. Here is my graph for E9s, and the Hagerty graphs:
Since inflation has been such a big story recently, I adjusted prior years for inflation, bringing them up to “2025 dollars”. That shows that we are basically back where the market started when BaT was born in 2016/2017. Back then, the average price was $58.5 in 2025 dollars, although that was probably inflated by sales of really nice examples, since the median price was $45, compared to $55 this year. Once again, this tracks with Hagerty. They don’t usually adjust for inflation, but I did find a graph of their “Hagerty 100” index that follows low-dollar collector cars, mostly American muscle. It shows the market at an all time low after adjusting for inflation. Here is my graph and the Hagerty graph:
Of course, BaT is just a snapshot of a larger market. As we have seen, photos and seller reputation seem to have a big effect. Also, it is dependent on what cars are brought to market. Sometimes there is a good crop, sometimes there is a string of rough looking cars up for sale.
Hagerty had predicted that younger buyers would enter the collector market, but for now, they say that the biggest growth is still in buyers over 65. Where younger people are buying, it seems they are more interested in cars from their youth - from the 80s and 90s. I guess I’m an outlier. I’ll turn 40 soon, but I still think of the 60s and 70s as the golden age of automotive style. It seems the jury is still out, whether people my age will move from collecting E46 M3s and E24 M6s and add E9s to their collections.
I know it doesn’t feel good to see our cars’ value staying flat, or even decreasing for those who bought during the pandemic. I think at the end of the day it is a reminder that we should be in this hobby, not as an investment, but because we love these cars. And we should show them and drive them without worry of hurting their value. If the market recovers from here, that would be a nice bonus. But if not, we still have some of the classiest, best engineered cars on the road.
For 2025 the average highest bid was $59K with a median of $55. This includes high bids on cars that did not meet reserve, since I am mostly interested in what the market is willing to pay. If we look even closer, quarter 1 saw a mean/median of $61.1/58.8, which was flat in Q2 ($60.7/60), had a big drop in Q3 ($47/39.5) and a recovery in Q4 ($75/66) thanks to some decent cars from big-name sellers doing very well. However I think the volume might be too low and the noise too high to make looking at quarterly data really useful.
Those yearly values of $59 and $55 are down significantly from last year, which had an average of $74.1 and median of $73, and down further from the height of the market in 2021, which had an average of $95.3 and median of $78. This tracks with Hagerty’s data for the collector market in general, which shows peaks around 2021/22 and subsequent declines, both in the “heat” of the market (I think this is volume and the number of cars beating reserve) as well as the index of values. Here is my graph for E9s, and the Hagerty graphs:
Since inflation has been such a big story recently, I adjusted prior years for inflation, bringing them up to “2025 dollars”. That shows that we are basically back where the market started when BaT was born in 2016/2017. Back then, the average price was $58.5 in 2025 dollars, although that was probably inflated by sales of really nice examples, since the median price was $45, compared to $55 this year. Once again, this tracks with Hagerty. They don’t usually adjust for inflation, but I did find a graph of their “Hagerty 100” index that follows low-dollar collector cars, mostly American muscle. It shows the market at an all time low after adjusting for inflation. Here is my graph and the Hagerty graph:
Of course, BaT is just a snapshot of a larger market. As we have seen, photos and seller reputation seem to have a big effect. Also, it is dependent on what cars are brought to market. Sometimes there is a good crop, sometimes there is a string of rough looking cars up for sale.
Hagerty had predicted that younger buyers would enter the collector market, but for now, they say that the biggest growth is still in buyers over 65. Where younger people are buying, it seems they are more interested in cars from their youth - from the 80s and 90s. I guess I’m an outlier. I’ll turn 40 soon, but I still think of the 60s and 70s as the golden age of automotive style. It seems the jury is still out, whether people my age will move from collecting E46 M3s and E24 M6s and add E9s to their collections.
I know it doesn’t feel good to see our cars’ value staying flat, or even decreasing for those who bought during the pandemic. I think at the end of the day it is a reminder that we should be in this hobby, not as an investment, but because we love these cars. And we should show them and drive them without worry of hurting their value. If the market recovers from here, that would be a nice bonus. But if not, we still have some of the classiest, best engineered cars on the road.
