New Excellence Early 911 values - wacky
 

I rarely find much value in the annual Early 911 Market Price Guide in Excellence, but this one (May issue) is, well, hallucinatory.

I grabbed it at a shop today and read a few of the prices out loud to the owner, to groans and eye rolls.

I didn't memorize any of the prices, but some were around 1/3 of what it takes to buy an 'excellent' Porsche in the real world.

That's funny, I've thought that the values in Excellence lately were way high. I'll have to look for that new issue - that's "March", right?

Cheers

d.

May.

May 2009 then?

Sorry, yes, May '09.

The current issue is April '10. Their distribution & cover dates have always been pretty far out of sync. Somehow I missed this issue from last year, and the copy I looked at was pristine -- never opened. Fooled me.

It showed '73 911S coupes topping out at around $37K. And in sales over the last year, excellent examples have crossed the six-figure mark.

The early 911 S cars have rather quickly risen in value, over the past couple years. If that May, 2009 article was written with a lead time of 3 months to actual publication, then that $37K figure was from Winter 2009.

$37K does seem a little low. An unrestored example, maybe needing a motor rebuild, freshened cosmetics, may have been available one year ago in that price range.

The $100K arena cars are certainly fully restored examples, rather than average specimens.

While '73Ss, in particular, have risen over the past years, they have never in the past decade been in the range reported in Excellence.

I saw my first 6-figure plus '73S in '05. It was a 40K mile tangerine coupe. That car would likely be over $200K now. Believe me, we will see pristine (not restored) original '73S coupes approaching $250K. Most will be quiet, private sales.

techweenie,
It sounds to me that you are talking about cars that Excellence puts in the "beyond excellent" class. To my recollection they are usually pretty explicit that the beyond excellent cars you are talking about that often change hand privately at the very top of the market are going to be 20-30% above their "excellent" price rating. Excellence attempts to publish average prices for each condition/price level but they've always made allowances for those exceptions that define the very top leading edge of the market.

Matt, I know of buyers for every 'beyond excellent' 911S you can find at 20-25% above the Excellence top price.