You live right up the road either i-79 Or route 8 from me. Nice car that 1996 Roadmaster. Thanks, I'm glad I found this forum. Great people and great info.
Welcome mark100. I live in St Louis now, but I grew up in the north hills of Pittsburgh. Anyway, eBay has a '76 Buick Estate 9-pass with a 455 listed right now. Unfortunately it's on the west coast. But it might be something to look at to get an idea of what's on the market. Might be nice to have since it's the last clamshell year: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Buic...8b5QQitemZ270776780981QQptZUSQ5fCarsQ5fTrucks
It is a nice looking wagon, but he has surprisingly few pictures for a car he wants $7,000 for. No interior shots, no shots of the engine bay. According to the price guides, that car is not worth anywhere near $7,000. That's the value listed for a #1 condition '76 Buick Estate Wagon. #1 condition means better than showroom new and not driven. No car with 100,000+ miles on it meets that definition. Even his starting bid of $5,888 is too high. That car is worth more like $4,000 to $4,500.
I currently live in the north hills area, so I know it well. Price does seem high, but really looking for the 74/75 model years. Where do you get this price guide? Is there a bible of price guides that most people use that is more acceptable and accurate? Is this accessible online and condition ratings.....so you know how to rate cars. I have seen references to price guides on these forums. I got to say, I was looking weeks at different stationwagons before I stumbled accross this forum and it has really educated me about stationwagons.
There are several books available and a few online services available. The bottom line? A car is worth whatever someone is willing to pay. The guides are nice to look at but I have seen some of those prices as very high or very low. Depends on the book....some are old car guides, some are classic car guides and some are just plain used car guides. Probably the biggest flaw in the books aren't really the books but the sellers. Everyone seems to up the car into the next highest numbered category than the car really deserves. Everyone thinks that THEIR car is better than it usually is. This could mean thousands of dollars. Example: when I was in the used car business I bought a CHERRY 76 Chrysler Imperial for 600 bucks at the dealer wholesale auction. When I say cherry...it still had the clear plastic seat covers on it from the dealer and way less than 100K miles. They didn't call them Imperials in 76 and I don't remember what they did call that car but it was generally accepted that this car was the Imperial that was missing that year. Anyway...I no more than got it on the lot (after driving it for a couple of days...the 440 was FUN) and a guy came in and offered me $2500 before I had a price on it. Since I had to do nothing to the car I sold it to him. HE later sold the car to a Mopar guy for $5800. My point here is...the dealers at the wholesale auction saw the car as just another old car. The guy that bought it saw it as a really nice old car that would last and the Mopar guy saw it as a cherry classic. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It only takes 2 people to love a car to drive up the price. Books are great guides but you have to do due diligence and determine what really needs to be done to a car to get it where you want it and go from there. Just because someone else is willing to pay more for the same car or a book says it's worth $1000 more than you are willing to pay does not make you wrong. Probably makes you a smart shopper.
I'm using the Old Cars Price Guide http://www.oldcarsweekly.com/oldcarspriceguide/ It's published by the same people who publish Old Cars Weekly, which has been around for decades. I subscribe to both. The Price Guide comes out about 4 times per year. There is an online price guide available here: http://www.collectorcarmarket.com/ The problem with this one is that they don't even both with station wagons, at least not '76 Buick wagons. You won't a value for one, and they don't have a value for my '73 Custom Cruiser, either. Yes, people argue all the time about the worth of these price guides, and people can always point to an example where a car in a certain condition didn't sell for anything like what a price guide said it was worth. But this misses the point. These guides don't tell you what any particular car is worth (even though I often use them that way!). Rather, they give you an AVERAGE of the prices paid for cars of that make, model, and condition. You could, for example, have two identical '76 Buick Estate wagons in #3 condition where one sells for $2,000 and the other for $4,000 for whatever reasons. The AVERAGE of those two numbers is $3,000, which is very close to the $3,200 value given in the current edition of the Old Cars Price Guide for a '76 Estate wagon in that condition. But that $3,000 average is NOT indicative of the actual prices paid for the vehicles whose selling prices were used to come up with that average. So the price guides are obviously more valuable when there are lots of transactions to average in, but, still, they're just averages. Then you also get the constant statement "a car is only worth what someone will pay you for it." Fine. But this is trivial. Of course it's true, but it's of no help to someone looking to buy a car and who wants some idea where the market is on it or someone looking to sell a car and who needs to come up with some kind of an asking price. So, yes, use the price guides with grain of salt. They may not be everything, but they aren't nothing.
