What's the deal with dustycars.com?

[ckissick]

I just started hearing multiple radio ads the last two days from www.dustycars.com. They say they'll pay "top dollar" for any classic car. They buy lots of 911s. They can actually turn a profit? And how does this figure in the current economy?

[Zeke]

Send them a pic of something from our a"abandoned" threads. You'll see what top dollar means.

[MattKellett]

Do you think they buy to sell to dealers in Europe? There's no mention of selling any cars, just buying.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Had this idea myself. Perfect timing, though with the economy slowly getting better, people may decide to hold onto their barn residents. I've done better buying and selling 911 parts cars and stuff than the stock market by 4X, or 100X, depending on what you invested in.

[widebody911]

For S&G, I sent them an email asking about my '52 bug.

Hello:

Thanks for getting back to me. It's difficult to price the bug without looking at it, because the rust situation is impossible to assess from pictures. I don't want to give you an inaccurate number. I would prefer to look at the car and make a cash offer. However, I want the car, and I can understand you not wanting your time wasted. Time is valuable.

That said, we can pay from $4000 to $7500, judging from the pics. We need to see the rust situation to make say for sure. If it's relatively solid, we will pay at least $5000K for it. If that works, we can come over at a convenient time, complete our deal quickly, and load the VW on a flatbed, no hassles.

[speeder]

So how much is it worth? Did they leave off a zero?

[ossiblue]

Originally Posted by speeder

So how much is it worth? Did they leave off a zero?

To quote from the reply: "If it's relatively solid, we will pay at least $5000K for it."

Now from my understanding, that is another way of saying $5,000,000. I think he should sell

[widebody911]

Originally Posted by speeder

So how much is it worth? Did they leave off a zero?

I paid $12k for it, which was actually towards the high end at the time, but for that price the car was delivered to my house that afternoon. No idea what it's worth today, as there aren't a lot of data points for unmolested cars, but really nice ones are pulling $40k-$50k.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

"Top dollar" these days is about half of what it was two years ago.

They're buying and holding, expecting to dump them on a turnaround market in 1-2 years I'm guessing.

Buy low, sell high. They obviously think there's a turnaround coming.

[NICKG]

or buy a bunch of OLD junker cars and then sell them off when the clunker bill takes effect and they are worth $$$

[graphitecarrera]

Dustycars.com sells classic cars frequently on e-bay. You can usually tell their cars by the unusual heavy detailing of the undersides of the cars. It is often too bad because they remove all the original undercoating. They claim that by their heavy steam cleaning of the undersides of the cars they are revealing that the car has not hidden secrets. It's an interesting approach.

[HardDrive]

Care to expand on that?

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by ckissick

I just started hearing multiple radio ads the last two days from www.dustycars.com. They say they'll pay "top dollar" for any classic car. They buy lots of 911s. They can actually turn a profit? And how does this figure in the current economy?

"Top dollar" is not definable.

It can mean different things to different people.

To the potential seller it means "it's generally accepted current worth"

To dustycars it means "as little as we can get away"

It's a lead gen tactic which opens the door to toss out the first feeler.