I didn’t deliberately set out to get involved with restoring classic cars. My hobby came about as the result of doing a favor for a friend who was deployed overseas with the military. He had a vintage Ford Mustang but no place to store it, so he asked if he could park it in my garage. I agreed, and then while he was gone, I began looking under the hood. I decided to buy the vehicle from my friend, and started working on it during weekends and days off. Soon, I was hooked on this brand-new hobby.
Once I finished restoring the Mustang, I drove it for a while before deciding to sell it. I realized that I derived most of my joy from actually rebuilding these cars rather than collecting or driving them, so I just wanted to get a different vehicle to work on. I had no idea how much I could get for the Mustang, so I bought an old car price guide to help me determine a benchmark. Once I found the information I wanted, I placed an ad and received tons of calls within just a few days. I sold the Ford for what I wanted, then put that money towards another classic in need of some repairs.
So this is what I spend most of my free time on now. I’ve learned a lot in the few years that I’ve been doing this, and am often able to estimate a vehicle’s worth to within a few hundred dollars of what’s stated in the most current old car price guide books that I have. This is no small feat, considering how little I knew about this whole subculture just a short time ago. But still, no matter how adept I become at calculating values on my own, I would never try selling one of my restored cars without consulting an old car price guide first. There’s just too much room for error otherwise.
Though lots of different companies publish these books and magazines, I don’t really have a preference for one old car price guide over another. They all contain the same basic information, and the dollar amounts of the published vehicle values don’t vary significantly enough to recommend one version over another. The only thing I would recommend is to get updated copies of whichever old car price guide you like best to make sure you’re dealing with the most current data. The value of classic cars don’t fluctuate all that much from year to year, but there’s really no excuse for relying on 5-year-old info when you can easily get your hands on the latest news.
The bottom line here is that if you plan to buy or sell a classic automobile, you absolutely must spend a few bucks on an old car price guide first. That way you’ll have a better idea of what the vehicle is worth and will be in a better position to negotiate a reasonable deal.