Is it me or is the old parts market very slow. I've listed a lot of parts in the last three months and very little is selling. I have listed parts on Craigslist, FB Market Place, eBay and here and only a few items sold. I think I list my stuff at at reasonable prices and it just sits. None, that I think, is junk, all are very useable parts. Some time back if you posted something on eBay or CL it would be sold in a matter of days. Now it seems like nothing sells. I see a lot of overpriced rusty junk listed, if it sells I don't know. There's really no way to know if the rusty trucks with the frozen engines and no title being listed for $5K sell.

I think one thing that could be affecting the old vehicle parts market is many people seem to be modifying their vehicles with newer engines and chassis and there is little need for old stock parts. Plus with everyone building vehicles that look like junk there isn't the desire for better parts.

 

seems to be all over, i tried to sell off my carpenter tools, really good dewalt and like, not one bite ,

 

Earlier this year I talked to a very well known, world wide, vintage Buick parts seller. He told me the market has died off quite a bit. This guy is the go to Buick guy.

I am assuming with the price of everything going up in the last three years people are more concerned about paying for the essentials than project cars and parts for them. There's a rather decent swapmeet coming up in a few weeks nearby and I usually know quite a few vendors, it'll be interesting to see how well they sell their parts.

 

I also think people have got very wary of the proliferation of scammers . I doubt you could start a conversation in a coffee shop or pub without having someone there with first had experience on scams .

 

I have had a 48-52 passenger door on eBay and marketplace for probably 5 years. The drivers door sold rather quickly. The buyer didn't need the passenger door. It is listed for $85. It is in decent shape. The door bottom needs a panel put in. It didn't sell at Carlisle when I went there. I've had interest from guys far away but I will not ship it. I will deliver to the 2024 Truckstock, however .

I bought 4 Dentside front fenders from a local guy. It was dark when I bought them. I thought it was 2 pair but they are 4 passenger fenders. That screw up is on me. They are in great shape, no holes or dents. No one at Carlisle even looked at them.

Again interest far away. The interested person says find out what shipping is and he'll pay. I've been burned before. I box an item, take it to UPS or post office, tell them the shipping price and they say "oh, that's too much." There is no fastenall near me and no greyhound service.

The stuff I have left besides the door and fenders is what I say are not real nice NOS stuff that catch buyers' eye. But what I have left, besides the door and fenders, are small stuff that doesn't take up much room. So my wife is glad for that. I do have the original doors to my 54. They are not bad. If they had sold lower patch panels in 1998 I would have kept them on. I'm not sure why I am keeping them ...

 

There was a Vinwiki video on Youtube some time back from a guy who owned a salvage yard. He said salvage yards took a real hit about twenty years with the proliferation of imported reproduction parts. You can buy a new or rebuilt alternator from many of the McParts stores or many other online sources for about the same price a salvage yard could sell a used one. Same with sheet metal. Example, the front fenders for a '48-52 for a complete front fender is about $850, the last time I checked. Before they came out you could easily sell a decent repairable fender for $500. Who would pay $500 now for a "repairable" fender that would take $500 to have a shop get it back into primer, still will have a patched up fender, when you can have a solid new fender for less money?. I am pretty sure the doors for the later model trucks are being reproduced. I have two wig window assemblies for a '56 that I listed for $40 each, I checked, new reproduction pieces are selling for $400 each so I figure $40 each is a pretty decent price, no takers after three weeks of posting. When I list a part I look around to see what new go for and what used are being sold for and price accordingly.

And as I posted above, it seems like the hobby is going more now for modified trucks than stock trucks. Everyone is putting in one piece electric windows, AC/heater units, newer V8s and modern chassis with power disc brakes. There seems to be very little left in a modern modified vintage vehicle that left as it came out of the factory. The modern vintage vehicle wants fast and smooth rides, not stock slow and truck ride.

It seems my idea of building a retirement fund with old truck parts may not have been a good idea.

 

Bob,
It does seem like things are a bit slow. I recently listed some OT parts on Craigslist (receiver hitch and LED trailer harness for 2012-2022 Grand Cherokee). Not a single bite. Been listed for 2 weeks now.
I just realized that I've barely got any scam calls or texts from these posting. Normally you get a text within 30 minutes asking if the part is still available.....lol

I don't do Facebook. I do check facebook marketplace now and then but since I don't do facebook Ive never tried to contact anyone (probably a good thing as I've seen tons of stuff I wanted...lol)

 

Like Joe says it's gonna be a dark Winter.

I'm in business for 30 years, and the second half of last year was probably one of the worst in terms of consistency and number jobs scheduled, as bad if not worse than 2008-2009. Customers don't want to pay anywhere near what they were paying in 2022. It's just gotten tighter and tighter. I had guys calling me every month looking for employment too, that's always a good indicator that it's the general economy or market and not just you.

As far as Ebay, I've noticed the bids aren't as high on stuff as they used to be and some things are easier to get. But there's not as much on there as compared to 2019 when i first started buying and collecting small vintage truck and car items and parts. Precipitous drop in the amount and quality of items being sold and that started a year or so back to be the case. I know people who've been at this a lot longer than me and comparatively even my "golden" experience from 2019-2020 pales to their experiences in from the early 2000's.

Bob- you can track Ebay sales by filtering to "Sold" items to keep track of your $5K seized flathead trucks. LOL.

 

In my experience, craigslist is pretty well dead. Which is a shame, really, because I used to to a lot of buying and selling there 10-20 years ago. I tried giving a decent piece of furniture away there recently and it took like 3 weeks and about 15 flakes to finally get somebody to show up. Marketplace seemed to take off around the time that craigslist started to decline, and I expect that's not a coincidence.

But now marketplace is starting feel like it is going downhill too. Classic vehicle projects and parts sit on there forever. What I think is going on is that everyone who is into restoring old cars and trucks are getting old enough that they don't want to accumulate any more stuff before they kick off. And the folks who are buying are mostly interested in buying projects that can be updated to function on modern roadways, with all the modern conveniences.

But who knows. This stuff is cyclical. When I was getting into cars in the 80s and 90s, everybody was hopping cars by throwing edlebrock intakes and Holly 4 barrels onto 70 and 80s detuned small blocks. Nobody cared about flatheads anymore. But they did come back eventually!

 

I "sold" something on eBay yesterday. The buyer paid yesterday. It was NOS brake lining, part number: ADA-2007-D. I go out to the garage to get it. I couldn't find it. I come back in and look at my marketplace listings. It was listed as sold. I forgot to remove it from my eBay listing.


If anyone is looking for NOS linings here is what I have:


The top one #ADA 2007 is sold.

 

When I was a kid there was a well known flea market south of Milwaukee, "Seven Mile Fair". The vendors as I remember were mostly private individuals selling stuff they had laying around their houses and a some were pros that bought stuff at rummage and yard sales and flipped them to make a buck as a weekend gig. Then it progressed to the pros who sold mass quantities of imported junk and factory seconds they'd buy by the truck load. After a while it was no fun to go there but it still kept growing from an outdoor venue to a massive covered indoor venue.

When I first got into the old truck stuff, back in the early '80s the only real place to go to find parts were swapmeets. I was really new to them back then. The guys who set up spots seemed to be old mechanics and hot rodders selling their parts. You could find parts for our old cars and trucks. Now it seems more than half of the vendors are pros who go from one swapmeet to another every weekend, most are selling new tools in large quantities and other mostly small block Chevy stuff. Very hard to find parts for older cars and trucks that are older than 30 years old. I've noticed eBay has gotten the same way. More multiple parts from the same vendors selling new stuff..

I've gotten real lucky on Craigslist in the last 4-5 years but that's dying out. I've bought and sold a few items on FB Market Place. Both CL and FB you do have to be really careful and thankfully I haven't gotten burned yet even though I've bought quite a few things from across the country but I try to protect myself the best I can. One thing I have to done on a few purchases I made a great distance away is ask members on a few of the boards like FTE who live nearby to check on and pay for the parts, take possession and ship them to me.

Just wish some of the stuff I've been trying to liquidate would move. I'm like I think most others, kind of short on funds for my projects, I've always depended on selling parts to help out with that.

 

Not ford truck parts, but downsizing my Dad from a 4br house to a retirement apartment. Some really nice stuff, some antiques, some European not much interest. I even tried giving some away or donating some. A very expensive full dining set with table and leaves and cabinets. I tried $800, even down to $300. ( each chair cost more than $300) Still no sale. Young people are not moving out and getting household items maybe?

 

Bob, years ago (1997-98) I went to the Carlisle Truck show to buy parts to fix up my 54. Then I went there to sell extra parts I had picked up. One year my brother came and sold some of the Chevy truck parts he had collected over the years. It was becoming big with low riding rice burners. It was held in July. The next year our Mom died and we had to give up our vendor spots.

The next year Carlisle moved the Truck Show to August. After I collected more parts I started going to the All Ford Show in June. I sold stuff cheap because I needed money to repaint my 54. Then I bought my 55. It too got harder to sell parts as time rolled on.
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Here's my rant about swap meets and old parts:

I wanted to look for Holley 1904/1960 carbs for my truck, I only have one in operating condition, no usable spares.
our big CA swaps are Turlock and Pamona. I went to Pamona twice and Turlock once last year and between those three occasions and hours of looking at every stall I came across a total of 5 units.


5.

Couldn't believe that.

 

I found 3 Holley 1904/1960 carbs in our local scrap yard several years ago. If I went back, probably the pickings wouldn't be so good. The owner has since died. The old vehicles are still there, but the collection isn't of course growing. Every year it gets more and more picked over.

I pretty much only attend one swap meet a year and almost never find anything I'm looking for. I wonder how the venders can possibly make out with the things they are trying to sell. They must though, because there never seems to be a shortage of venders.

Jim