Quote:
Originally Posted by kaisen
Buying a car "by the book" just doesn't work...etc.
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Well, neither does looking at auction records, if you're lumping all cars of a particular type into one basket. Face it, there's more variability in condition, options, color desirability, etc. than a 2 month swing in the market.
FWIW, I used to be a dealer. We used the books, as did every other dealer, wholesale buyer, etc. that we dealt with.
Any price is a starting point. Then you have to use your experience to adjust the number, for the things I mentioned above. There are other factors, too, but I'll skip those since I was addressing a simple question. To re-iterate, no dealer I know has ever used trade-in values as "the number" for buying cars at auction.
JR