'92 Sentra radio & CD: worth anything?

[Dux, Darin]

So I grew up in Pierce, Nebraska, home of last weekend's massive old car auction.  You might have heard of the Lambrecht car auction, and History Channel broadcast from there for 3 hours Saturday night.

These cars brought 2 to 3 times what they should have been worth on the open market, simply because they were "Lambrecht cars".  This guy was a crazy, hard to get along with Chevy dealer that no one in town would actually buy a car from.  He had vacant lots all over town that he piled junk cars on and never maintained, which PO'd everybody because of all the overgrowth and varmints they attracted.

He and his wife lived in a house in town they never maintained, and finally when the roof collapsed they moved out to an old farmhouse in the country.  The City Council, after fighting him for years to clean up the lots, finally succeeded and he moved the cars out into the trees on the farm.  There, they deteriorated and contaminated who knows what.

Flash forward to 2013.  He's 96 and finally is convinced to hold and auction.  The auction company does a great job of playing up every angle of a romanticized version of the story.  They use excavators, backhoes, and every means of car salvage to drag the hulks out of the trees and weeds.  They literally kept finding vehicles up to a week before the auction because of how deep they were buried and piled.

As I said, cars sold for several times the actual market value because of the romance of the story.  But if one runs the numbers, even with this excessively inflated prices, the return on investment for the best cars was about 2%.  Now, the auction company takes 20%, so on a strictly cash basis the guy drove the town crazy for decades at a cost to him of tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Yes, I'm a car guy.  My dad and I have restored cars from the 30's all the way through the 70's muscle cars.  I've owned a half-dozen SE-R's and my current DD is a VSpec Sentra.  I built a 450hp Twin Turbo Z.

I'm also a collector and hoarder, because I've experienced all my life the search for hard to find parts.  However, I also know that it costs money to have and store inventory, and financially it makes sense to sell now, invest in something else, and if in the future you have to find the item again you just pay the cost.  Thanks, internet.

We'll, my $.02.  I've learned a few things over the years and have seen countless car guys and shops come and go.  I've learned what most business advisors know: inventory costs money, and it's really hard to invest in anything that you can hold on to and make more money than flexible investing.

<rant mode off> -Darin

From: se-r-bounces at se-r-list.org [mailto:se-r-bounces at se-r-list.org] On Behalf Of Frey, Richard K
Sent: Friday, October 04, 2013 9:08 AM
To: Randall Rensch; se-r at se-r-list.org
Subject: RE: '92 Sentra radio & CD: worth anything?

The reason those old muscle car items sell for so much is because no one, back in the day, thought there'd be a demand and tossed them.

The ser is so niche, that it might be super hard to find one in 30 years.  Some guy making millions from his e-zine might want to restore a ser.   Is the storing hassle worth the gamble.  You decide.  :)

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