Anyone want to buy a brand new 50+ year old Chevrolet??

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It is all but a given that anyone thinking of attending and bidding should know how to roll with the big dogs.

Not necessarily. A lot of the people you see examining the cars at auctions bring along their favorite mechanic to examine the cars before the auction. Then they bid accordingly. And surprisingly some buyers don't even attend the auction. They just give an employee $150,000 and tell them "Come back with something interesting."

I knew John O'Quinn the famous Houston lawyer with a personal car collection of over 600 cars. He liked cars with histories. Like Marilyn Monroe's white on red 54' Cadillac convertible. Pope John Paul's original Ford Escort. This was his last car before becoming the Pope. Dean Martin's 66 Pontiac Grand Prix. He also had Joan Crawford's 48' Chrysler convertible. All of these cars are in concours condition. In fact he had a private "invitation only" building that stored them all under one roof.

John had 4 or 5 very trusted buyers that would scout cars for him. But he very rarely went to an auction himself.
 
Collection?

More like a junk yard.

I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but cars that have been left out exposed to the elements for a few decades or more are a huge project to whip back into presentable shape. There's a handful of cars that were kept inside the dealership building, but the majority of the 500 cars at auction were left out in a field on the family farm for decades. It's not quite like the proverbial rare classic found sheltered in a barn for years. Maybe the Chevys can be salvaged, because there is such an abundance of aftermarket body panels and trim available for these, but for the other brands, good luck.
 
After watching the video on one of the links... the auction "house" - really a husband and wife team - should be reprimanded for setting metal parts like hubcaps and steering wheels on top of the few cars in the auction that were "new" and kept for years in the dealership building. Amazingly stupid and careless.
 
I think the people doing this auction may have had good intentions, but may have simply been overwhelmed by the number of cars they had.

There was a guy I knew that had about 8 classic cars. A 72 Pontiac convertible,
4 Chrylser-Maserati cars from the 80s, a 4 door Cadillac that he claimed was the biggest 4 door Cadillac ever made in standard production, and a few other Cadillacs from the 70's-80's.

The house he lived in was small. He begged his friends for 1 car space in their garages. He only drove a 1990 Cadillac himself. So his mechanic told him he would store the cars for free. He thought the mechanic would take in 6 of them and store them somewhere in his garage. Nope, he stored them on the lot behind the mechanic's shop. The guy wasn't charging him any storage fees.

Unfortunately, this guy passed on quite suddenly from a heart attack. So his sister handled the estate. When she went to look at the cars, the mechanic said her brother hadn't been by to see the cars in at least 8 years. After sitting outside in the Texas sun for 8 years and exposed to the elements, it wasn't a pretty site.

Most of the cars paint was peeled off, the roof on the Pontiac Convertible had just rotted away leaving the interior open to the elements. She tried listing the cars in Hemmings, tried local classifieds, even tried Craigslist but there were no takers. The few people who came to look at the cars turned around and said "no thank you". So the cars were hauled off to the junkyard for scrap.

I helped a guy once with an authentic "barn find". It was a 1967 VW Sqareback that was located in the small Texas hill country town of Comfort, Tx. It was in a barn since the mid 70's. It didn't look too bad just filled with all kind of fluff & grasses and weeds. We towed it back to Houston into a storage building. When we rolled it off the trailer the guy in the drivers seat jumped out pretty quick. He said there "are noises in that car". What they had was a car that had a family of rattlers in it. They were all buried in the debris in the car. He opened the back hatch an a few of them came out. At that point I said no way was I going to work on that car with those snakes in it. I heard later on that he just parted the car out and it wasn't in the greatest shape and he felt it wasn't worth restoring.
 
This story has hit Yahoo! news now.

 

Respective project scopes notwithstanding, this is still an impressive collection of vintage cars.  When was the last time anybody saw a car with less than ten miles on the odometer that was also a candidate for restoration?  It's not a selling point, but for that characteristic alone there are some unique finds here, and the cars have a history behind them and in some cases their original window stickers, all of which provides value.

 

 
 
Maybe that catch of vintage cars should go to a museam-there they could be preserved for all to see.If they go on the road-you can be sure they will be worn out,modified, or even crashed.Bad end for such historic cars.surprized GM wouldn't want to buy them back for a museam they could set up.Don't know if GM has such a thing-here is a start!
 
The NOS cars that were stored indoors will hopefully go to people who won't ratrod, donk, or "improve" them with every non stock item they can find. I'm certainly not talking about having to replace original hoses, tires, batteries, anything else that 40 plus years of non use can be a hazard or inconvenience to deal with. I would hate to see anyone take one of the new cars and replace everything usable, or redo paint and upholstery that hasn't been ravaged by UV rays or dry rot. 
 
The NOS cars that were stored indoors will hopefully go to people who won't ratrod, donk, or "improve" them with every non stock item they can find. I'm certainly not talking about having to replace original hoses, tires, batteries, anything else that 40 plus years of non use can be a hazard or inconvenience to deal with. I would hate to see anyone take one of the new cars and replace everything usable, or redo paint and upholstery that hasn't been ravaged by UV rays or dry rot.

Now you're talking. I'm sort of a persist when it comes to cars. The more original they are the more I like them. But at local auto shows these kind of cars hardly ever win a prize. The ones that do win are the ones that have been turned into low riders, custom day glo paint, and all kind of "lighting effects" added. I am sure there is a market for them. I hope none of the new owners decides to take a chainsaw to the car and cut the roof off just to make a "cool convertible". I've seen that one several times.
 
This is only a couple of hours North and West from Omaha - it would be fun to see the cars and the auction. Norfolk, a small city just a few minutes from Pierce, NE should be able to handle the influx of buyers easily.

Could be a fun September day. We should plan a party!
 
For the prices that I'm sure the garaged NOS cars will go for, they will probably go to people who appreciate them.  If you want a vintage Cameo, Impala, Corvair, Vega, etc. to pimp out, you can find one that runs for a whole lot cheaper than I bet the inside cars will go for. Rich(er) collectors are going to come out of the woodwork, so they can say they put the 2nd, 11th, or 50th mile on a vintage collectable.  I can't blame them for it, I would too in that situation.  They will be able to put the money into the cars that they need.  
 
I was just at a farm auction this past Saturday.  They had some barn find cars.  One was a 1935 Caddy 2 door.  Barn condition, it brought $66,000!  The 1932 Plymouth split window coupe brought $12,800 and it needed A LOT of work.  This small collection of barn cars had people from quite a few different states in attendance.  I can only imagine what this sale is going to do.

 

Click on view photos to see these cars and then compare.

http://www.auctionzip.com/cgi-bin/auctionview.cgi?lid=1788304&kwd=&zip=17046&category=0
 
"a car with zip and zing"

in that line of the commerical listed above, i was expecting them to give that fine Ragtop everything it had! oh well. LOL
 
There will be a feeding frenzy at the auction, and I'm not sure I'd want to witness it :-).

The ideal situation is to find a desirable older car through word of mouth or by chance, with a seller that is more interested in it going to a good home than to make a bundle. At an auction the popular cars will draw top dollar. The less fashionable ones (today) won't bring as much but might bring more later on down the road when they are more fashionable. Fickle tastes and all. Also, the market for old cars is cyclical. During the boom years of the 1990's they got quite pricey. During the recession collectors started selling off part of their inventory to generate cash. So prices dropped or remained flat.

It's also a truism that one can rarely get back what one has put into restoring an older, worn car, unless it's an especially rare and valuable model. And then some such are actually worth more unrestored (like old winning Italian race cars). The general wisdom is that it's more economical to buy a car that's already been restored. But where's the fun in that? ;-)

The flip side is that cars are perishable. So that nicely restored one will deteriorate over time. The rubber and leather will harden, the grease solidify, etc. To be kept in top shape they need to be stored in a climate controlled facility. Few average collectors can afford that. Of course I'm referring to the top rung cars like Deusenbergs, Rolls, Mercedes, Delahaye, Packard, Doble, etc. And to bring top dollar and concours honors they have to be restored to original configuration - no modifications allowed. It's quite an ego game played by the wealthiest collectors to whom money is no object if they can claim the Best in Show at Pebble Beach or other major Concours. Some of whom know little to nothing about cars but just want to show off.
 
And for whoever buys one of the Corvairs they now have leak proof dip tube seals that will last forever. Just ask for them. This was the main source of them leaking oil all over the place. I had one and it leaked at least a quart a week. You'd spend $400 to fix it and in five months it'd be leaking again. The new seals fix the problem permanently.
 

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