Used car prices

[Roscobbc]

With the used and classic car market in something of a turmoil over the last few years with many cars failing to get the prices that were being achieving pre-Covid, perhaps seeing the same vehicles remaining for sale on the usual sites and forums makes it easy to come-up with an opinion?
Irrespective of how the classic and 'specialty' market is relating to the kind of cars we are interested there almost seems to be another world where traditional high-end European classics are still fetching comparitively good prices at the auction houses (albeit in many cases below their 'peak' prices.)
On one of the Facebook classic/American car groups someone had noted the low prices certain classics (and specifically American car were being 'realised' at last months Hampsons Bolesworth Castle auction.

The Bolesworth Castle September 2025 Classic, Performance & Supercar Auction

Auction Details

auctions.hampsonauctions.com

This auction is a little different from others in as much as sellers are not charged commision.........this is paid by the buyer.
In particular a 2005 C6 Vette with rather gaudy Le Mans 'tribute' colour scheme and just under a 100K miles sold for £12938.
A Ford Pilot V8 saw £7312. A '90 Mustang Vert saw £3938. A '49 custom Cadillac low rider Coupe £14625. A '42 Studebaker coupe £4922 and a '95 Z28 Camaro £3094
All the above vehicles were sold 'no reserve'. Not clear whether they were from one seller or multiple sellers. Also not clear whether that 'hammer' price included buyers commission (probably not). Noticeably there were other vehicles 'with reserve' that presumably didn't sell.
One of the contributors (a trader) on the Facebrook thread commented that these cars reached reached their respective values and the figure that people are prepared to pay...........can't say I totally agree with that. There must be a few unhappy sellers expecting the auction house to have achieved far better figures for their clients.
The old addage is Caveat Emptor ('buyer beware') - perhaps Caveat Venditor (;seller beware') is a more appropriate saying in todays world?

 

[Chevrolet]

A '49 custom Cadillac low rider Coupe £14625.

I was looking at the results of that auction earlier on. Loved that '49 Caddy Coupe that went for £14,625:

Lot 29 - 1949 Cadillac Fastback Coupe

Lot 29 - 1949 Cadillac Fastback Coupe

auctions.hampsonauctions.com

And looking at the results of their previous sale on 27 July at Oulton Park, it was up for sale there/didn't sell with an estimated sale price of £35-40k!

 

[Roscobbc]

A really good stock '49 coupe would be that kinda money - 'stateside the same car, immaculate mind you with modern front and rear 'clips' and late engien would be double that figure even now! - a 'landmark' car.....even rodded!

 

[antijam]

With the used and classic car market in something of a turmoil over the last few years with many cars failing to get the prices that were being achieving pre-Covid, perhaps seeing the same vehicles remaining for sale on the usual sites and forums makes it easy to come-up with an opinion?
Irrespective of how the classic and 'specialty' market is relating to the kind of cars we are interested there almost seems to be another world where traditional high-end European classics are still fetching comparitively good prices at the auction houses (albeit in many cases below their 'peak' prices.)

The 'investment' side of the Classic Car market is still relatively buoyant. These are cars that are bought purely for their potential as an appreciating asset. They are unlikely to see the open road very often - if ever; They pass their time cosseted in temperature and humidity controlled environments in anticipation of the time when their owner thinks he or she will realise a significant profit by putting them back on the market. The big attraction of such speculation is that unlike more traditional investments a car is deemed a 'wasting asset' and in the vast majority of cases any profit realised will be free of capital gains tax (CGT)
The more mundane sector of the market - where most of the cars of interest to us as 'users' are found - is currently more volatile. Prices fetched for 'Concours' and 'Excellent' condition cars are in general fairly stable across most marques. Prices gained for cars needing work are much more variable since the final market value of very few cars will justify the ever increasing cost of restoration.

 

[Llewelyn]

Guys allow me to give you a stark warning about Hampsons.

They're not like any of the other car auction houses (CCA, Iconic etc)

Their business model (and the way their sales people earn commission) is to do everything they possibly can to force sellers into advertising at no reserve - they will over value the vehicle and then give you the hard sell about vehicles with no reserve making more on the hammer. They will try and convince you that if your car has a reserve it probably won't sell so you will lose your entry fee (which from memory is about £300) plus expenses involved with prepping and transporting the vehicle etc.

THEY DO NOT CARE WHAT THE CARS SELL FOR because if the vehicle sells, they get paid and that is all they care about.

Other iffy business practices are that they cold call private ads and try and convince owners to put their cars through their auctions, and they are extremely pushy when doing so.
The T&C's of auction entries mean you cannot back out without an extreme penalty and I can give you a real world example of this.

Earlier this year I was selling a 2016 Mustang (some of you may remember it on my YT channel, the blue one) and Hampsons approached me to put it through one of their sales. I thought it would be a nice day out and take some of the effort out of selling so I agreed. And I agreed to sell at no reserve. Paid the £300 entry fee and planned to get the car to their storage facility so they could photo it and prep it for the sale day.

In between paying the entry fee and physically getting the car to them I gave it some further thought, read some reviews online and got cold feet about dealing with them so I called it off, wrongly thinking I'd lose my £300 and that would be that. Bear in mind at this point they hadn't physically seen the car, or incurred any costs whatsoever (no transport, storage, photography, marketing, valeting etc). They'd seen a photo of it and had a couple of phone calls with me. The tirade of abuse I got from the "consignor", the "sales manager", the "operations director" was quite frankly unbelievable. Doing everything they possibly could to try and get me to put the car through the auction and threatening that I'd incur huge exit fees "which was a road they don't want to go down"

In the end I told one of them that their behaviour is tantamount to bullying and that I would never do business with them again.

Then the "legal" letters started.... They were trying to hit me with a £3,000 exit fee!!! Absolutely unbelievable. I told them (politely) that they could absolutely get stuffed and pointed out that I had a YT channel with circa 20,000 classic car enthusiast subscribers, mostly from the UK and if they didn't leave me alone and waive the fee I'd be filming an expose on them. They began to back down slightly at that point and then the legal letters stopped. I lost my £300 and learned a life lesson.

The long and short of it - DO NOT SELL YOUR CAR THROUGH HAMPSONS, EVER

They are a bunch of crooks basically. Message me privately if you want more info...

 

[Roscobbc]

A sobering story indeed Llewellyn, Thanks for recalling your experiences.

 

[Llewelyn]

A sobering story indeed Llewellyn, Thanks for recalling your experiences.

No worries - Interesting eh!

 

[Chevrolet]

No worries - Interesting eh!

Unbelievable!!

 

[Roscobbc]

Unbelievable!!

I suspect if one was to 'drill down' in to owners 'experiences' with some of the other 'auction sites' harrowing stories could appear.......

 

[Nassau65]

No worries - Interesting eh!

Very informative. Have always thought most classic auction houses are a bit shark-ish, this/your experience confirms my thoughts.

 

[TimP]

I've never tried selling at auction - Llewellyn's story sounds pretty horrific. Thanks for sharing, it's useful to know these things.

However, I have bought from auction. I got my 15,000 mile C4 from WB & Sons - an auction business based in Newcastle. It was a very positive experience. I had plenty of information about the car before I decided to bid on it. There were loads of photographs and a guided tour video that showed all the basic characteristics of the car. Add on to that an MoT check (that I did - which didn't show much to be honest as the car was imported in mid 2023) and that the auctioneer had done a CARFAX report, had a fair bit of service history and some other history (including the purchase invoice) for the previous owner gave me some confidence that this car was likely to be Ok. The commission was 9% which was a good deal lower than most of the other classic car auctions. They also arranged transport (at a competitive price) from Newcastle to the other end of the earth in Eastbourne.

The only negative things that I found out about the car after purchase that I didn't know about before were a) the CAGS system was still in place (which can't really be described as a fault as it was standard with the car, although it was not mentioned) and b) the headlight motor/gearbox issue (documented elsewhere on this forum) which together cost me about £40 to resolve. Maybe I got lucky - perhaps that's part of the thrill of buying a car (or anything else for that matter) this way, few things get the pulse racing like bidding at auction.

An auction purchase is never going to be risk free, you have to do some research and have to accept that some money should be put aside in case you find anything untoward. In this case it worked out very well and, as I say, maybe I got lucky but the experience this time round was pretty good.

A year on I'm still really happy with the C4. It's going to get properly detailed inside and out over the winter. Come spring, it should look like a brand new car.

 

[CaptainK]

Its surprising when you start hearing about experiences like this. There was a well known FTO supplier / fixer back in the day when I was more involved in the FTO club. Every single person having major issues with their FTO to be fixed went there, myself included. Long story short, their work was really shoddy, but because this place was perceived as being the best place to go, no-one talked it up. It was only when they went bust a few years later that it all came out.

 

[Roscobbc]

If you objectively read much of the auctioneers blurb about the specific details of the car you're interested in all too often it's "cut 'n' paste" text and and frequently severely lacking in detail about the car on sale. Unfortunately TV shows like Bangers and Cash seems to be regarded by perhaps many as being the font of knowledge of all things related to classic cars...........and they most certainly aren't. Anything out of the ordinary and they're totally out of their depth.......as indeed are the majority of the other auction houses.

 

[Corvette]

A friend and I once entered a car each into UK’s largest auction house. The bidding on both cars stopped about £200 shy of our reserve. We both went to rostrum and said we will accept the bids only to be told an auctioneer “we allowed to bid up to reserve price but not over, those were our bids”. On both cars. No sale then!
The UK also has one of the laziest classic car dealers often listing on eBay who will sell any make of car. When you Google parts of his description of the car so often it’s cut and pasted from auction blurb where he bought the car from the week before.

 

[Nassau65]

Very true about the auctioneer bidding up to the cars reserve. Most times it does work in the sellers favour.
I suppose the same practice may apply to the classic auctions. Never actually used classic car auctions to sell anything.

 

[Nassau65]

At the end of the day, the “auction house” is just that. A auction house. It will endeavour to sell your car. Some are better than others, some worse.