2.4: Buying via Auction

Automobile auctions are big, big business with nearly ten million cars crossing the block in 2018 for an estimated value of over $100,000,000 USD. While there are many types of cars that cross the auction block, ranging from salvaged vehicles to lease returns, fleet sales, and repossessions, for the sake of The Car Collector’s Handbook we are mostly concerned with the “luxury auto auction” segment where the best, most collectable, most desirable cars are bought and sold for millions of dollars. Auction houses ranging from Barrett-Jackson and Mecum with more diverse selections of collectable cars to Bonhams, RM Sotheby, Gooding & Company at the highest end are an amazing place for the collectors to find their next acquisition. And trust me, if you have the ability to go to any of these auctions, I strongly recommend it. Even if you don’t intend to make a purchase the spectacle is usually off the charts and, at least at the higher end, the cars they have for sale often include the best and most rare cars in the world. The cost to attend is usually reasonable — hundreds of dollars depending on the house — and you’ll be able to get up close and personal with an awful lot of nice cars.

One of the most popular auctions in the world today is the entirely online “Bring a Trailer.”

While attending an auction is one thing, buying a car from an auction is another thing entirely. The core challenge with an auction is that you have a very limited amount of time to make your decision. You won’t be able to get a pre-purchase inspection, you won’t have the ability to take the car for a test drive, and you’ll be limited in your examination of the car by the crowd of people around you and the house rules for access to the cars they have for sale. Depending on what you’re hunting for this may not be an issue — if you’re looking for a delivery mile 2017 Ford GT you’re not going to need to spend much time examining the car and really only need to wonder how well you’ll fit in the car and whether it will be fun enough to drive to justify a 300% markup over MSRP. The same is true for super wealthy collectors who are looking for the most storied Ferrari racing cars, ultra-low production Lamborghini, or brilliantly restored early Bugatti — all you really need to do in this case is show up with more money than the next guy and you’re guaranteed a win.

Of course, this book is really not for those guys.

Most folks go to an automobile auction to try and get a deal on a car, and despite not being able to deeply examine the car you might be bidding on, there is still an opportunity to be had if you approach the auction with a solid plan and a clear head. If you’re pretty sure you want to try your luck at an auction here is what I recommend:

1. Familiarize yourself with the auction before you intend to bid. Auctions move really fast and when you sign up to bid if you make a mistake … the house won’t care. While it becomes more of a process to attend an auction before you actually want to buy it will pay dividends when you’re in the thick of bidding; you’ll know what to look for, where the phone and online bids are coming in, and have a sense of the auctioneer and his or her familiarity with your competition.
   
   This is not a horrible recommendation, by the way, since auctions are pretty fun to attend especially you’re not signing up as a bidder and don’t intend to have any skin in the game. You get to see some amazing cars, have a few drinks, and watch other people spend money without obligation. It’s actually pretty fun, but if you intend to eventually buy be sure to pay attention to how the auction actually works. Ask questions about what you need to do to bid, get on the houses mailing list for future catalogs, and watch the interaction between the auctioneer and prospective buyers to familiarize yourself with the process;
2. Do your homework on the car(s) you’re looking at. Do not, I repeat, do not just sign up to bid at an auction and sort of just decide what to bid on by glancing at the cars or the catalog. While the best auction houses do spend time ensuring the cars they sell are quality automobiles, the agreement you have when you sign up to bid explicitly states that the houses bear zero responsibility when it comes to the cars and their representation and that all sales are final. A car looks amazing at an auction … because the seller paid a detailer good money to make sure it looks amazing. Given that you’re not going to be able to drive the car — you may get to sit and start it though — you will literally have to judge a book by it’s cover unless you do your homework ahead of time.
   
   By homework I mean you should make sure you know what the common problems are with the year, make, and model you’re looking at are. Does the car have any known issues that would ideally have been addressed prior to auction? Is the color the car is now actually a color that was originally available for the car? Are the wheels and exhaust factory equipment or aftermarket? There is no possible way for me to describe all the things you need to know before you buy a specific car without any real opportunity to inspect it, but you should have as much of that information as possible before you decide to bid. Also, I strongly encourage you to have that homework on paper if you can — it probably seems like something you can just use the Internet to search for while you’re there, and you probably can do that to cover the big picture issues for a car, but you’re far better off doing your reconnaissance in advance of the day the car crosses the block;
3. Do your homework on pricing for the car in advance. Anyone can buy a car at an auction; all you need to win is to be willing to pay more than the other people bidding. But the problem with that is two-fold: first, if you go that route you’re as likely as not to pay far more than the car is actually worth, which I suppose is fine if you never intend to sell the car, but trust me, you will definitely sell the car someday so why would you pay more for it than it’s worth? Second, and this is just an unfortunate reality, sometimes the sellers of cars at auction will bid against you in order to move the price of the car higher and higher without actually intending to purchase the car. Sometimes called “shill bidding” it’s a practice that no auction house would ever admit to but one that they also don’t have 100% control over.
   
   The good news is that you can avoid overpaying for a car at auction by simply making sure you know how much the car is actually worth in advance. There are tons of resources for figuring out how much to pay for a car and we’ll cover them all in the chapter on “Deciding How Much to Pay for a Car” so you really don’t have an excuse to not have an upper-limit for your bidding. That said, when you’re bidding at an auction you need to factor in the fact that you won’t get to inspect the car deeply ahead of time so should assume that something will be wrong. Depending on the age of the car, the type of car, and whatever history you’re able to discover that could mean a complete engine rebuild which, from experience, isn’t cheap. And while you cannot factor in a complete rebuild and typically expect to win, if you don’t factor in some budget for repairs you’re likely to lose in the long run.
   
   You also need to factor in the way the auction house makes money, referred to as the “buyer’s premium” which is typically 10% or more at “traditional” auction houses which can be the difference between getting a good deal and just buying a car in many cases. For example if you win the car with a bid of $50,000 USD … you’re paying $55,000 USD to take the car home. It may not seem like much but again, when you factor in shipping costs you’ll see that if you’re not careful about where you are going to stop bidding that “great deal” can suddenly become “not great at all.”
   
   Finally, unless the auction happens to be in your hometown — and lucky for you for living in a fancy enough place to merit having an auction — you’re going to have to get the car home somehow. This usually means shipping the car and, as you can imagine, when the big auctions are going on and with the immutable law of supply and demand in play, can also be “not cheap.” The auction houses give you a limited time to take possession of the car — usually three to five business days — and so you’ll need to scramble somewhat and pay whatever premium rates the trucking companies are asking given their schedule and the fact that “professional” auction buyers often reserve slots before they have even won anything, just to make sure that base is covered. We’ll cover shipping in more detail later, but do some homework on what it might cost to get any car you win home and factor that into your bidding strategy as well;
4. Keep in mind the car may have a reserve. Depending on the auction house and car in question, often there is a “reserve” on the car which is the lowest price the consigning seller is willing to let the car go for. Reserves are always kept secret, at least until they have been met when sometimes auctioneers will say something like “reserve is off” or “this car is being sold today.” Setting reserves is the result of a conversation between the seller, who wants a higher reserve that will yield them more money, and the auction house who wants a lower reserve that will yield them more sales. If the bidding doesn’t meet the reserve, and if the seller isn’t willing to lower the reserve amount, everyone loses. The seller paid to bring the car to auction and have it detailed to look it’s best but has to just transport the car back home, the auction house listed the car and took time that could have been allocated to another car but won’t be getting their commission, and any buyers who were bidding, well, they won’t be getting the car for what they believed it was worth.
   
   Strangely enough, even though you’d think that sellers and houses would set low enough reserves to ensure the car sells, it’s not uncommon to see a “reserve not met” or “RNM” result. While I don’t personally have a ton of experience here, my suspicion is that RNM’s happen when sellers are too invested in the car and don’t really want to sell it, when auction houses really want a special car featured and are willing to take the chance that despite a high reserve there will be two bidders who really want the car, or when market conditions for the car have changed dramatically between the time the car was consigned to auction and the actual auction taking place.
   
   There isn’t much a buyer can do about the reserve to be honest; if the seller is asking more than your research tells you the car is worth that’s just life. If a car you’re bidding on does go RNM but you were an active bidder it is definitely worth asking the auction house if the seller might negotiate after the bidding stops — the worst they can tell you is no, and some houses like Barrett-Jackson and Mecum will actively work to connect the buyer and seller after an RNM result because if they facilitate the sale they still get their commission. It can’t hurt to ask;
5. Pull a CARFAX for the car you’re looking for in advance. Before you head to the auction make sure to get the VIN numbers for any cars you’re thinking about and run a CARFAX report. While CARFAX is not perfect, it is a pretty good measure of how many owners a car has had and how the car has generally been driven. We’ll dig into the details on CARFAX elsewhere but suffice to say it’s worth the small price you’ll pay for a report to have an objective history of the car;
6. If you can, bring a mechanically inclined friend to the auction with you! Since you’re not going to be able to do a pre-purchase inspection at the auction the next best thing is to bring someone who knows what to look for on cars in general or, better, the car you’re looking to buy. While not always practical, having another set of eyes on the car, especially eyes that can be objective about the vehicle, can help you make a better decision about whether the car looks good but may be a mechanical nightmare or whether it’s solid. Don’t expect your buddy to be able to get under the car and start pulling things apart — they won’t be able to — but ask them to look at the car as if they were thinking about buying it themselves. If they wouldn’t spend their own money on the car, you probably shouldn’t either.
   
   Having a friend with you at the auction has another advantage: you can share the price you’re willing to pay for the car and ask them to help you stay “in check” and not get too caught up in the moment. It can definitely help to have someone else calmly remind you that you’re at the maximum amount you said you would pay for the car and so it’s time to put the paddle down and walk away.
   
   If you can’t take a mechanically inclined friend with you the next best thing is to have a mechanic on speed-dial so that when you’re looking at the car you can chat with or, better, video conference with someone who knows the car and who’s opinion you trust to be that extra set of eyes. If you’re already collecting cars you already have a mechanic, and if you don’t, ask around locally before you head to auction and see if you can find a mechanic who has experience with the car you’re looking at and if they can make a little time to help you. In my experience mechanics and shops are happy to do that since they know fully well that if they help you that they will be seeing the car soon enough;
7. Look at the car as dispassionately as you can. Auctions can be super fun, and sellers and auction houses put a huge amount of effort into making the cars and everything else look amazing. It’s really easy to get excited about a car when it’s detailed perfectly and presented professionally, and if you get excited you’re likely to miss something. Lights are often set up to hide issues with paint so bring your own flashlight to get both a good look at the paint and also to look underneath the car. If you’re allowed to, open the doors and trunk and engine bay and make sure everything opens and closes properly. Look at the gaps between doors and body panels to make sure they’re even all around. Roll down the windows and roll them up again, open sunroofs and glove boxes, put seats forward and back, go over the entire car to the extent you’re allowed and do it as if you’re expecting to find something wrong.
   
   If you’re able to have a skeptical eye when you look at the car you’re more likely to see problems. If you do, then you can decide then and there whether they are a deal-breaker or whether you can live with the likely cost of repair. And if you don’t see problems, well then, get that paddle out and get ready to start bidding;
8. Familiarize yourself with the house’s “Bidders Conditions of Business.” Similar to a normal purchase agreement, auction houses have extensive “conditions of business” that detail their and your rights if you bid and buy at their auction. Written by lawyers, of course, these terms are definitely worth reading, especially if you’re new to auction buying, so that you understand what will be expected of you if you have the high bid. These documents detail things like your responsibilities as a bidder, any rights of rescission of the sale due to misrepresentation, requirements for bidding including the fact that there is no “cooling off” period at an auction, details about the purchase price and buyer’s premium, and lots of stuff about payments, taxes, title transfer, removal of the vehicle, etc. that are actually pretty important to understand if you want to have a successful auction experience.
   
   If you want to have a look at a sample of these conditions you can either Google “auction conditions of business” or head on over to RMSotheby’s web site and review their document:
   
   https://rmsothebys.com/en/home/bidding-conditions/?termsId=200
   
   If, when you’re reading your auction houses conditions, you have any questions about what a specific condition means, ask someone in advance before you sign up to bid. If you don’t understand and something goes wrong, it will still be 100% your fault; the auction houses have been doing this business for an awfully long time and their lawyers have had the chance to think about every possible thing that could result in a problem for them … and have documented it in the conditions. A lack of knowledge of their process and expectations is on you, not them;
9. Make sure you know what you’ll need to do to actually register to bid. Most auction houses will require valid photo identification, a credit card to verify your credit history, and a Bank Letter of Guarantee. The Bank Letter of Guarantee is, in the words of RM Sotheby’s lawyers:
   
   “an irrevocable letter issued by your banking institution stating that the bank will guarantee a check written by you, indicating your account number and the monetary value of the Guarantee; it must also state that no stop payments will be issued. The bank will state that the Guarantee is to be used for the purposes of the proposed auction on the date of the sale.”
   
   You’ll need to have this from your bank before you can register, and apparently some larger banks won’t issue them and instead only issue letters of Certified Funds, which can limit how much you can bid. Suffice to say you’ll need to spend some time with your banker in advance of the auction to be ready to bid;
10. Arrive early. Given everything you’ve just read you can no doubt see that it will take real effort to successfully buy a car at auction. One thing you can do to increase your chances of making a good decision is simply giving yourself enough time to collect the data I’ve recommended and showing up early. This will give you more time to look at the car or cars you’re interested in and also look at other cars the house is selling to see if your car is in better, same, or worse shape than the lot in general. Have a look under the hood of your car and see how clean the engine is, look for obvious signs of paint repair or bubbling of paint, look for leaks and seeps and other general indicators of hoses and gaskets failing, put your nose in there aren’t odd solvent or mold smells that could indicate water damage or worse.
    
    You won’t have the advantage of a professional inspection but you can still do an awful lot of due diligence on the car if you give yourself enough time. After you’ve had your look keep an eye on the car and see who else is looking at it closely, they may end up being your competition later in the day and, if not, you should ask yourself why they aren’t bidding against you. You still might miss something — you’re only human — but since the car is being sold “as is” and all sales are final making sure you have the time to give the car a good look is the least you should be doing;
11. Do not get caught up in the hype and excitement. I cannot emphasize this enough — auctions are super fun and auctioneers are paid to generate excitement about each and every car they are selling. When you raise your paddle all eyes will be on you; people will be cheering you on, the house may send someone over to work with you directly, and it is incredibly easy to get caught up in the moment and, as a result, bid past the limit you have set for yourself for the car based on the final price you’ll pay to get it home.
    
    Don’t do that.
    
    If you go to lots of auctions you will see that the pros — and the pros are obvious, trust me — are dispassionate about their bids. They don’t talk excitedly with the house reps that are working with them, they aren’t drinking alcohol while they bid to steel their nerves, they aren’t looking around the room to see who is watching them bid … they are just reacting calmly and coolly to other bidders and, if the action goes past their limit, sitting down and letting the car go.
    
    You want to be like these guys.
    
    Your worst-case scenario if you’re new to auctions is letting the moment get to you but everything around you is conspiring to make that happen. People will bring you drinks and the auctioneer may look you in the eye and ask you over the microphone in front of the entire room of car lovers “oh, come on, you can go $5,000 more for this beautiful example” and “you don’t want to let it get away for just $1,000, do you?” The system is, like in Las Vegas, rigged against you and designed to get you and other buyers to pay as much as possible for each and every car being sold. Your loss is the houses and seller’s gain, so keep in mind there will always be another car and be ready to sit.

Now after reading my recommendations you may be thinking “well hell, that sounds like a horribly risky way to buy a car, why would I do that?” The answer is, of course, because if you’re a car collector some of the best examples out there will show up at auction, cars that might never otherwise see the light of day. At the best auctions where, just like with dealerships the houses have their reputation to consider, cars are accurately represented, the bidding is reasonable, and the entire experience can be quite pleasant. If you do your homework and have a plan that you stick to, you might end up with an amazing addition to your collection that you would never even seen, much less had a chance to purchase.

At a minimum, if you’re new to car collecting I strongly recommend you go to an auction or two. Don’t register to bid, just pay to attend and have a look at the cars, watch the bidders, and listen to the action. As I have said a few times, auctions are super fun and one of the most wonderful ways to experience the collective passion for car collection out there. Especially if you’re able to get to Monterey, California during Car Week in August, the Auto Auctions in Scottsdale, Arizona in January, or Concourse Week on Amelia Island, Florida in March, the whole experience is really amazing. The best cars are everywhere and the excitement is palpable, even before the auction houses open their doors.

Online versus Live Auctions

As I am sure you’re aware if you’re reading this book, online auctions are a thing. Originally limited to broader online auction platforms like eBay, car collectors now have access to some pretty interesting cars via dedicated sites like Cars & Bids, PCARMARKET, and of course, Bring a Trailer. There are, of course, others that deal with salvaged cars, that are focused on dealers and brokers only, and that sell more vehicles than just cars, but at the end of the day they all work more-or-less the same way. For the sake of discussion in The Car Collector’s Handbook, mostly because it’s the most widely known platform, I will focus on Bring a Trailer (BaT).

Bring a Trailer is an amazing resource, even if you’re not buying a car.

Bring a Trailer was founded in 2007 by two auto enthusiasts initially as a way to share information about cars that were for sale elsewhere on the Internet. Eventually the founders allowed sellers to advertise directly on their site and the success of that effort gave way to Bring a Trailer Auctions and Premium Auctions. The stated goal of Bring a Trailer Auctions was “greater transparency, more comprehensive listings, and fairer fees over traditional platforms” and, for the most part, the company has done that. On any given day there are a wide range of collectable cars for sale on the site generating comments from potential buyers — or not — all being sold in seven days for a 5% fee capped at $5,000 USD. The last point is important since, as discussed previously, buyer’s fees at traditional auction houses can be 10% or more and are not capped. Especially now that Bring a Trailer is now offering “Premium” listings — special listings for the highest-value cars that run for 21 days but still have the same $5,000 USD buyer’s premium cap — the site is becoming a much bigger player in the auction market in North America.

The advantages of Bring a Trailer, and to an extent the other online automobile auctions sites, over traditional auctions are as follows:

1. You actually have a chance to get a pre-purchase inspection. Since Bring a Trailer auctions run for seven days or longer, if you’re really interested in the car you have time to arrange with the seller to have a pre-purchase inspection done or, depending on where the car is, actually go for a test drive. Even if you can’t get to the car yourself, the length of the auction means that you can leverage the advice I gave in the section on “Buying Sight Unseen from a Dealer or Private Party” and have a friend who lives closer to the vehicle go have a look on your behalf. And this is still very good advice; there is no such thing as “too detailed an inspection” when buying a used car in this modern age.
   
   Fortunately every BaT auction has a “contact seller” link that will allow you to ask the seller questions, arrange for an inspection, etc. And sellers are motivated to work with serious buyers and allow for PPI because of the second advantage of sites like Bring a Trailer;
2. Bring a Trailer and similar sites allow buyers and sellers to interact directly via comments. While I will revisit this under “disadvantages”, one of the best things about Bring a Trailer is the huge online community they have and the willingness of said community to ask questions, add commentary, and offer their own insights into the cars being sold. This is the “transparency” that Bring a Trailer sought to bring to the market and to a large extent it works great; to my previous point, if a serious buyer asks a seller to facilitate a PPI and the seller balks … everyone will know that right away and the auction will likely go sideways.
   
   What’s more, the BaT community is, collectively, possibly one of the greatest bodies of knowledge about specific makes and models of cars in the world. It is rare to not see a community member weigh in on some specific and highly nuanced aspect of the car that the average buyer would have no awareness of whatsoever. What’s more, if a car is represented as “period correct” or “all original” and it’s not … you will know immediately … and often the seller is called to task for misrepresenting the car. And while the information provided in comments is usually very useful to prospective buyers, it’s not uncommon for these comments, to become somewhat snippy, so much so that BaT has a little link to indicate that a comment is “not constructive” and if it gets clicked by enough people the comment will magically disappear;
3. Bring a Trailer provides access to all previous auction results. One of the best ways to figure out how much you should pay for a car is to get detailed comparative sales, much like if you were buying a house. Bring a Trailer knows that and makes all previous sale information freely available to everyone. Just go to the “Completed Auctions” page, click on “View All Completed Auctions” and search for the car you’re interested in. At this point I would be pretty surprised if there weren’t at least a few similar cars — they may not be the exact year and model, but any pricing information will be helpful. What’s more, you can see the entire listing and all the comments for the car which provides a tremendous amount of information to influence your decision to buy and how much to pay. Sometimes you need to be a little flexible on your search term to get results — a search for “911 SC Targa” only found one car, a Cabriolet, but if I took out the space and searched for “911SC Targa” I found dozens of previous sales to browse.
   
   Also, previous results data will show you which cars had “reserve not met” results which can give you a sense of the seller’s market mindset as well. If you are really into this stuff you can almost look at search results sorted by “recently closed” and see a string of “Sold for $XX,XXX” results that are broken up by a “Bid to $YY,YYY” results that indicate the market for that car may have gone down suddenly and thusly the sellers were asking too high a price. It’s more interesting than useful, I suppose, but it’s interesting nonetheless;
4. Bring a Trailer gives you easy access to “no reserve” cars. To avoid bidding on a car that has a reserve that might be too high, BaT provides a direct link to “no reserve” auctions where you can be sure the car will sell providing at least one person wants it. Point your browser to https://bringatrailer.com/no-reserve/ and you’ll have access. The car you want may not be there, but if it is you’re off and running;
5. Bring a Trailer gets a lot of really odd cars. While the traditional auction houses have a tendency to focus on higher value or more rare cars, in my experience BaT gets some really crazy stuff you might not expect to see. The best way to experience this for yourself is to sign up for their daily newsletter at https://bringatrailer.com/email/ and every morning when you wake up you’ll have immediate access to the cars that were added to the platform overnight. You never know what you might find and decide you simply must have it for your collection;
6. The BaT platform has some really useful functionality for bidders. In addition to everything I’ve listed, Bring a Trailer makes it super easy to see who you’re bidding against, who the seller is, and to follow the auction so you’re sure to have the latest information as it’s made available. The latter, the “Watch Auction” link is a one-click way to make sure you’re kept up to date if new photos or videos are added for the car and that you’ll be reminded when the auction is about to end. There is also a “Remind Me” link for the end of the auction and, if you are bidding, you’ll get email every time someone outbids you, and you can click the “keep me in this conversation via email” to get notified every time anyone has anything to say about the car. It can get a little overwhelming but as I have said several times now, there really isn’t too much information when you’re trying to buy a car, especially one you may not be able to see for yourself;
7. In general, Bring a Trailer listings are very complete. Bring a Trailer doesn’t just let the seller write the copy for their auctions any more than a traditional auction house would; they have a team of auction specialists who work with each seller to collect information and photos and then the specialists write very consistent descriptions of the cars. Photos are provided and BaT encourages their sellers to have professional photos taken because, no doubt, their research has shown that better photos sell cars for higher prices. It may sound like a trivial advantage, but trust me, if you go read Craigslist ads for used cars for a few hours you will see just how wonderful the BaT approach actually is;
8. Bring a Trailer understands the value that good photos has on auction results. Online auctions really depend on photos to show the car’s condition, but if you’re at all into cars you are already well aware that not all car photos are taken equally. Bring a Trailer understands this, likely based on their own data, and so have an entire guide that details how to take the right photos of your car to help them sell it for you:
   
   https://bringatrailer.com/bat-photography-10-tips-for-making-better-photos-of-your-car/
   
   The guide is really good and worth a read if you’re thinking about selling your car regardless of how you plan to sell. It’s not uncommon to see BaT listings for cars with hundreds of photos, often professionally shot, and multiple videos of the car, which is nice if you’re a buyer. Lots of photos increases the chances that you’ll spot something that’s not quite right and have a chance to ask the seller or, if you’re a serious bidder, make sure it gets attention during your pre-purchase inspection;
9. Model pages. One recent addition to the platform is their “Makes and Models Directory” which allows you to essentially subscribe to, you guessed it, specific makes and models of cars added to auction. As of this writing the list of models they feature is small but growing, and each model has it’s own page that provides a little information about the car, gives easy access to past auction results, and even has stories and featured articles that Bring a Trailer has written about the make and model over the years. You can see if the car you’re looking for is listed here:
   
   https://bringatrailer.com/models/
   
   Probably the best thing about the Makes and Models directory is that you can easily subscribe to be notified if a new car is listed. Again depending on what you’re looking for, this one feature can save you a ton of time since you’ll know more or less immediately when a car you’re looking for crosses the block;
10. Bring a Trailer … is addictive and fun. This is an odd advantage I suppose, but much like my description of how fun it can be to go to live auctions, Bring a Trailer can be really fun too, and it’s easily more addictive. With the success the company has had in the past few years they are getting more and more cool, rare, and unusual cars that are, from a collector standpoint, just plain cool to see. With the addition of their Premium auctions in 2020 they are crossing over into the domain of the traditional high-end houses, and that too is pretty cool. I’ll admit, sometimes when I’m not writing or taking care of my cars or, you know, actually working … I will browse the past results for Bring a Trailer’s Premium auctions. In the short time they have had Premium cars listed they have seen some amazing machinery cross the block, ranging from highly desirable modern cars to reasonably rare classics, and with a twenty-one day window for bidders often times the conversation gets very deep and very interesting.
    
    If you’re not sure about Bring a Trailer and the value it has to the modern car collector just do this: sign up for their daily updates newsletter. You can get the “regular” version with all cars or just sign up for the “Premium” version if that’s more your fancy, but every morning you’ll get a nice email with some of the cars they added overnight, one of which may be that next car you’re looking to add to your collection.

Now, while it’s probably clear to you that I like Bring a Trailer and appreciate the value that the site brings to the auction and car collecting community, there is some downside to the platform. The biggest challenges folks seem to have with BaT are:

1. Purportedly low reserves. One complaint I have heard from folks who have sold — or tried to sell — on Bring a Trailer is that they require reserves to be set lower than the seller sometimes thinks is fair. This makes sense, of course, since if a car doesn’t meet the reserve and doesn’t sell, Bring a Trailer only gets a $99 listing fee, not the full 5% up to $5,000 they make on a sale. And certainly, albeit anecdotally, cars seem to sell for more than folks expect, sometimes dramatically more, and so in theory a low reserve won’t hurt the seller — but that doesn’t make it any easier to stomach when it’s time to approve the listing;
2. Not every car is accepted. I have a friend, I won’t name him, but he really wanted to sell his Audi S4 wagon on Bring a Trailer a few years ago. It seemed like a no-brainer since there were a handful of similar cars that had been listed recently and they seemed to sell okay. My friend’s car was in okay shape and had decent mileage for it’s age and so he took some photos and completed the BaT form to list the car …
   
   … and was denied.
   
   Apparently despite the car being a nice example and my friend being willing to list with no reserve, Bring a Trailer didn’t like it because it was an automatic transmission. Now you can argue that, at least at the time, an automatic transmission wagon wasn’t really a special car worthy of collection, but certainly my friend didn’t think so. But ultimately it’s the houses decision about what they will list and what they will deny, and so it’s worth keeping in mind that the car you’re looking for … might not ever end up on Bring a Trailer;
3. The “Peanut Gallery”. I saved the best for last. Despite telling you only moments ago that the commentary on Bring a Trailer auctions was a huge plus and really somewhat of a game-changer in the collector car industry in terms of the information it makes available, there is a down side. As the platform grows and its reach among car enthusiasts grows, it has become increasingly common for people to make comments that at best don’t help and at worst can dissuade people from bidding. Usually the input comes from users who just want to hear the sound of their own voice, as it were, and don’t really add or subtract from the conversation, but even banal comments can get a negative reaction and drive the entire commentary downhill fast. Worse are actual negative comments — things like “I have seen this car in person and it’s awful” or “the seller ripped me off several years ago, do not bid on this car” — that are hard to verify but usually have a dampening effect on the bidding. Given that it’s not uncommon for users making negative comments to have never submitted a bid, much less bought or sold, it’s easy to see why sellers get frustrated with the platform.
   
   On that point, the platform does make it possible to see who is making a comment, and there is a little “thumbs up” and a number next to the username that tells you how many times other users have indicated that a comment the user has made was helpful. And while this is useful, given that users are essentially anonymous and that the “thumbs up” system is very easily gamed and basically just an indicator of how long the user has been a member of Bring a Trailer, often times people just read comments and don’t think about the person making them and what their motivations might be. And while the “flag as not constructive” link is there next to every comment and when it gets clicked by enough users the comment will disappear, in my experience it’s a likely that other users will begin to argue over the comment and often, at that point, the damage is done.
   
   If I were in charge of Bring a Trailer for one day, and please, if anyone at BaT reads this feel free to use this idea and treat it as your own, I would make four small changes to how the commenting system works: First I would have an icon next to every commenter’s username that indicated how many times the user had bid on a car themselves, since bidding actually shows some amount of skin in the game. Then I would add a second icon next to the username to indicate how many times the user had actually won an auction on the platform since, while it’s easy to put in a bid that you know won’t meet the reserve, winning takes commitment. Third I would add an icon indicating how many times the user had sold a car on the platform, if any, since when people are both buying and selling on BaT … typically you’re looking at a professional of some type. And finally I would put the year the user joined Bring a Trailer next to their username and icons, just to add additional context. Four simple changes that add some overhead from a database perspective but that have the potential to allow serious bidders to very easily evaluate whether they should be paying serious attention to a comment … or just ignoring it.
   
   The counter-argument to my suggestion is that deeply knowledgeable individuals may comment without having ever bid, bought, or sold and so their valuable comments might slip through the cracks, but honestly that is how the platform has always been run and super-users have managed to rise above the noise and add tremendous value to the platform as a whole. Those folks would still get the “thumbs up” clicks that would demonstrate their value the community and honestly, great comments aren’t the problem on Bring a Trailer.

Keep in mind there are alternatives to Bring a Trailer — PCARMARKET and automotive journalist Doug DeMuro’s “Cars and Bids” are the two that land on my radar screen from time to time, and depending on what car you’re looking for it’s definitely worth looking across multiple sites. The pros and cons I list for Bring a Trailer are more or less the same for other sites, although as of the time I wrote this, no other platform save eBay has the size audience the BaT has.

PCARMARKET is not just for Porsche anymore.

Speaking of eBay, you may be wondering why I haven’t discussed it really at all. The easy answer is that I don’t really recommend it as a place to try and buy a collectable car. Years ago it was an innovative way to list and sell cars I’m sure, but given the alternatives I personally see eBay as a way to find cars that you’d trace back to the seller’s dealership and try and work directly with the dealer. Lots of dealers do list on eBay for visibility but, and again this is my personal opinion, the listings I see never really have the same level of professionalism that I’m looking for when I am thinking about buying a car. Your mileage may vary, and if when The Car Collector’s Handbook is published I am overwhelmed by support for the platform I will definitely revisit this section of the book.

Beyond that I think I have covered an awful lot of what you’ll need to be thinking of when you’re trying to buy a collectable car. I’ve laid out your five most likely scenarios — buying locally from a dealer or private seller, buying sight unseen from same, and buying at an auction — and hopefully have given you at least a few things to think about when you’re going down one of those paths in search of your next amazing acquisition. Still, during that discussion I’ve touched on a handful of topics that merit additional detail: CARFAX reports, inspections, the notion of careful consideration versus impulse buying, deciding how much to pay for a car, and a few other topics.