How hard is it to buy and sell?

Not too long ago, heading to eBay and Craigslist were the two big ways to find a car online. As fees go up, and sadly Craigslist now has them, where do you go to find a good used car, especially from a private party seller? As a seller, where do you go to post a car to find a buyer?

I am not versed in this area at all. I simply have a quick opinion about it. When Craigslist came out with the fee to post a vehicle, the next free option was Facebook Marketplace. That was a great option until recently. Now, Facebook has all sorts of filters that make it very difficult to find a vehicle. For example, two vehicles that I like to look for are Jeep Grand Wagoneers and Porsche 944s. Neither are an option to filter by when you select model under those makes. When you do an open ended search it doesn’t pull up very relevant stuff. I am not sure if those models can be entered. It just gets frustrating. eBay Motors also used to be glorious, but that is also not the best way to find cars either. At this time, the best way I have found to find cars is AutoTempest. But, while the results are satisfying in quantity, it can be tedious to go through them. A note to make as well is that while you can filter for all sorts of features you want, there is actually no way to filter out features you DON’T want. If you are trying to find something without heated seats, there really isn’t a good way to find a car that doesn’t have that. You have to go one by one. Lastly, as if trying to find a car isn’t hard enough with all these factors, there is the issue that you are never going to find the correct car from the start. According to Jalopnik, an issue appears to be happening with Toyota Supras that are showing as 6 cylinder cars on AutoTrader, when in fact they are 4 cylinder cars. A website can only display what information is entered, at least…I think. At the time of this writing, there was not a response as to why this was happening.

Then, you have the buying side of things. Oh my goodness. As if it wasn’t hard enough to FIND the vehicle you want, now you have to deal with PEOPLE. Egos flair, information is withheld, paperwork is tedious, time is wasted, it is seriously just the most aggravating process ever. I’ve never bought a car from a dealer, but I’ve heard it is an absolute drain. But, I am almost certain that sometimes dealing with private party buyers or sellers is just as insane.

What really hit me as an eye opener to how even as a car person, I am now not interested in buying or selling cars, was a conversation I had with a friend the other day about buying and selling cars. This friend indicated that their car was getting older, it has miles on it, and they would potentially be in the market for a newer, but still used car, in the very near future. They said they would simply shop at CarMax and trade in their current vehicle for the newer one. Now, almost all car enthusiasts would suggest against this. I have grown up being taught to drive your car until the wheels fall off, or to private party sell your car because you can get more money. But…after I started thinking about it, from all the points I have mentioned above, I realize why that is a bad idea. Especially for a non car person to try to private party sell their vehicle.

I was tasked to sell a friends vehicle one time. They gave me a price they wanted to get and told me any price above that, I could keep. I also had roughly a 30 day time frame to sell. Let’s just say I am not a salesman. I did manage to sell it. However, it was only at the price that the friend wanted and I barely got rid of it in 30 days. While there are factors that can be part of that, like the car itself, I still didn’t do nearly as well as I had hoped I would have done.

In the end, I think CarMax and trading in your vehicle is a great idea. It can save you time and headache. You might think you are doing yourself a favor by trying to sell your car yourself. But, think of all the time, effort, and materials you are putting into that, to create the listing, prepare the car, deal with calls and emails and texts with stupid questions and non showing interested parties, and absolutely insulting low offers. Do you really want to deal with all of that? Just…think about it.

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The True Cost of Hot Wheel Hunting

Face it, hunting for Hot Wheels, as addicting and as much of a rush as it can be, takes a lot of time. As the saying goes, time is money. You might be wondering, how much money does the Hot Wheel hobby cost? Time to do that math!

Let’s keep everything well rounded and easy for this example. If you have a job, you get paid for your time to do the work.

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. So, at minimum, your time hunting costs at least that, even if it is your hobby. You have to approach it from this angle because if you aren’t earning money, you need to know how much your time would be worth if you were earning money.

Next, according to AAA, the average annual cost of owning a vehicle in 2019 was $9,282 a year, or $773.50 a month. That is $25.78 a day and $1.07 an hour. If you consider Hot Wheel hunting as a job of sorts, you might also want to consider the federal cost per mile rate, which is currently 57.5 cents per mile. That would be money you could be getting if you were not working for yourself. Otherwise, this doesn’t exactly fit into the equation because if one is using their own car, I believe the AAA rate accounts for the cost per mile in the ownership.

Hot Wheels cars can range in price. But, lets just take the mainline cars, and give them a rounded price of exactly $1.00. This example will be for just a single car

The equation is this: cost of time + cost of Hot Wheels + cost of car ownership = true cost to hunt Hot Wheels

If you spent 1 hour hunting for 1 Hot Wheel, the true cost of that car to you would be $7.25 + $1.00 + $1.07 = $9.32

Clearly those numbers can be adjusted accordingly. If the time is less or greater, if the amount of cars are more, and if you go to out to hunt multiple times a week. Even though you are paying a somewhat fixed price for the cost of ownership for your vehicle, the example is only using the average. That cost can technically be higher or lower as well.

So, that means you have to sell your $1 car for $9.32 and that still won’t get you to the break even point. Then there there is the second part of the equation.

The second part is selling and shipping and supplies.

Fees to post on eBay, use Paypal, and have shipping supplies can sometimes run up to 50% of the total cost. So, to sell that $1 car, to break even just from hunting for it, you have to sell it at $9.32. But if you don’t want to take a loss with fees and shipping and supplies, you would have to put the price up to about $15 dollars. That begins to make it a hard buy for someone who might hunt these cars themselves, and doesn’t make $15 an hour at a job. If you make more than $15 an hour, it still is hard buy when you only get 1 car. You might as well go spend an hour hunting and find 15 cars.

It is very hard to make money from buying mainline Hot Wheels on the pegs and reselling them online. There is money to be made, but you have to hunt, you have to hustle, and you have to work very, very hard. You also have to get a hold of cars that can turn higher profits, such as Super Treasure Hunts, or joining the Red Line Club and buy and flip those cars. I will say though, 100% profit is 100% profit, whether you make a dollar profit off a dollar car, or a $30 profit off a $30 dollar car, math is math. You just have to decide what is worth while to you.

A Patriotic Purge

So there are a few things on my mind today.

I read an article talking about how a guy is selling off his entire project car collection. I have been thinking that people like that should really get into finding the right home for those vehicles. Someone out there would absolutely appreciate the project car you have. In all reality I think the problem is timing and communication. When people want a car, they are going to find someone who has it. The problem is that many of the people who have the cars are not communicating that they have them. Its a sad day when amazing vehicles get hauled off the the junk yard because the owner thinks no one wants it.

I also read about how rally racing is probably the most expensive and hardest forms of racing. I have never been to an actual rally but I can imagine that it is more fun for the participants than the spectators. That is probably a factor into why it costs so much. Then again, there can be watered down versions of rallies that one can do with friends on public roads. The kicker there is just gas prices.

I am pretty impressed at the number of first time winners there have been in NASCAR this year. David Ragan is a wonderful driver and deserved to win last weekend in Daytona. Congrats to David Ragan. This upcoming Kentucky race should be pretty thrilling. These powerhouse teams really have not shown bright this year. Then again, was it really the teams or more so the individuals? If anything, this year has shown it is all about the individuals. Just take a look at the top 12 drivers. Then again, the teams have become tighter simply because of the tension on the track between individuals and the ability for more than one individual on one team to consistently do well. This chase will not be over till its over and I am completely ecstatic to watch it unfold!

I spent a little time with my friend today looking up Hot Wheels on Ebay. Pricing out cars we already have and looking up the cars we don’t. I love Hot Wheels but its hard sometimes to justify buying them when I could save the money to buy a real car. I guess being a passionate automotive enthusiast, I consider such things.

I was also thinking today about how the new styling of the Chrysler 300 would make a perfect coupe. Since the newer styled 300’s came out,  they have always had that watered down Bentley / Rolls Royce look. They have a chance now to take an “Imported from Detroit” vehicle and give it some flair, similar to a two door Audi/Bentley, since that’s what I think it would most collectively look like if it were a coupe. Not to mention that Cadillac has made a gorgeous coupe out of its well loved CTS. Then they hopped it up on some supercharging steroids to make it a CTS-V. Such an epic vehicle. I am a huge fan of GM and particularly Cadillac. However, I will support any American made company, such as Chrysler if they built a world class coupe. After the fourth of July, I have been all but thrilled to be as patriotic as possible. Hopefully the American automotive industry will do the same! 😀 God bless the USA!