Hey, that's a $20K truck easy, after you put $20K of parts into it and 2000 hours of labor.

 

Not a bad strategy. As you mentioned earlier they often don't know true market value of what they have. They don't want to sell something for $500 and find out later it's worth $5K+. And there are indeed a lot of low ballers on Craiglist. I've listed months old items I paid $1000 for an you'll have clowns emailing offers for $100. If anybody can find new price in 30 seconds on the net then what is the point of that? Just part of the game I suppose.

 

You're right. Borrow your cousins backhoe and go dig that thing out so we can get a better look.

 

A good gauge to use as to what the value of something is eBay. Not the bible of pricing but it will give you a good idea of what people are willing to pay for an item. I don't look at active posts, I look at "sold" posts to see what something sold for. It's also a good indication of what a vehicle in a given area could sell for. A rust free truck up here in Wisconsin will sell for more than the same truck in New Mexico.

 

I agree, might not be that bad after you get it out of the jungle. I've seen worse starting points... ask Canada John

j

 

Appraisers love recent auctions. They consider them to be the best indicator of what something will bring on the market, because it just did.

 

They do. Auction fever can make a single auction run wild, but find 2-3 similar closed auctions and you have true current market value whether we agree with the number or not.

 

Back in the day I used to religiously get the auto trader and by paying attention to what sold fast and what sat around you could come up with a pretty accurate price .

 

Yup, I do the same on HAMB listings lately. Actual sales in a few weeks or a month are true value. If it takes you three years to find a chump to impulsively pay anything near your crazy ask (which we can't actually verify if the seller just gave up), those sales don't matter to me.

 

After seeing a whole lot of pics that caused unwarranted optimism before I showed up to see reality, it's highly likely just a parts truck, but you never know until you check it out. Many projects start from trash, few are actually finished is the reality. This is the biggest Effie site on the planet right? How many outdoor stored projects see completion per year on this forum? One or two? I wish it wasn't so, but we are past 70yrs old for some of this iron now. If it didn't find it's way under cover decades ago, our chances are poor in 90% of the US climate. It's fun to dream it isn't mostly just junk though. The hunt is still fun.

 

There's always hope . lol .

 

 

Your project starter truck is an above average paint AZ truck now, or an Iowa truck left in a barn since 1970. Those are getting hard to find so no low ballers please, I need $5K lol. Some of the northern parts trucks I bought 20+ yrs ago were only $200 and that is about what they were worth after the hassles of hauling them. Kevin proves there are deals out there if you will do the work and travel. My 500 mile parts trips were well worth it in retrospect.

 

I have had two, the F-2 took about two years, the Buick has been sitting for five years.

 

Sorry we didn’t get the chance to meet for lunch. I did another turn and burn 2000 miles in 48 hours including load up time.