There are advantages to buying from a dealer as well as a previous owner. The PO is mostly interested in losing as little as possible, since most cars are sold for less than they cost. The previous owner probably knows more about the car than the dealer, since he has driven it for some time and is no longer (for whatever reason) in love with it, unless he is too old or impaired to drive anything. The PO might be interested in giving the car a good home, in return for the good times it has given him.

The dealer is primarily interested in making a profit. He is an expert in making the car look good, and if it is worth the trouble, to make it sound good as well. I have had dealers refuse to allow me to drive the car they were trying to sell, and others refuse to allow it to even roll in my presence. I am not sure what sort of knucklewalking fool would buy anything under such conditions, but I was not one of them.

There are dealers who will stand behind the cars they sell, and of course, this is a boon to those of us who are not at all mechanically inclined. One needs to remember, however, that what is in writing is far more important than what is just spoken.

A friend just bought an Infiniti, a 1995, I think, which looked beautiful, for about $7000. I noticed that the plastic headlight lenses were rather frosty looking and he told me that the salesman claimed that this was the way they were made. NO THEY AREN'T, LOOK AT ANY NEW CAR, I was tempted to say. I am pretty sure that the salesman (a guy we both have known from back before he sold cars) had to know that this wasn't true.

The PO may lie about the car, but he is not so likely at dissimulating as the dealer, which is better at saying things in such a way as to merely imply that the car is what you hope it is. The words from the Paul Simon song come to mind : "A men hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."

I have always bought cars from individuals, even though I have seen some cars shown by dealers. This is because I generally have a good idea of the maximum amount of cash I will pay (I made my last car payment in 1972) and iwon't even bid on a car that I don't think will be acceptable. If the guy lies about the mileage (because the speedo reads less than the door sticker or the evidence of wear on the pedals), or other items that clearly need repair, I might offer less, about what a dealer would charge to fix it. (Not that I am likely to visit a dealer) If there is evidence of serious mechanical damage, I will just pass on the whole deal.

I have found that if I write what I will pay on a business card, over half the time, I will get a call back about whether I am still interested.

I have bought two cars that didn't turn out to be as gopod as expected: a Mazda 626 I bought for my daughter that had been rearended and repaired and I failed to connect the fact that there had to be a reason that the trunk would not stay closed, and a 1984 Nissan 200SX that had been flooded in a Hurricane. This was not obvious until the wiring caught fire. In both cases I had a feeling that I was about to do something stupid, just from the way the seller spoke. The Mazda turned out to be okay after about $600 repairs, after which my daughter totalled it, but the Nissan was only driveable for three years. I paid $1900, so that was not too bad, but I still regret buying it.

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Semibodacious Transmogrifications a Specialty

1990 300D 2.5 Turbo sedan 171K (Rudolf)
1985 300D Turbo TD Wagon 219K (Remuda)

"Time flies like and arrow, yet fruit flies like a banana"
---Marx (Groucho)

I thought that the topic of this thread was "what's it worth?"

Seeing that, I decided to respond , given that I have personally sold well over 2500 cars in my career, I thought that I may have something valuable to contribute to this conversation.

I will concede somewhat that perhaps, it was rude for me to simply post my two sentences and to ignore what mr.Carlton had written above my post, but, in my opinion, the car was worth more than what he had suggested.

I had no idea, that the simple mention of my name, would start a personal attack on me, and my business. I didn't reply to this thread to start selling cars to people, nor to solicit their opinion of what they think of car dealers. I was simply throwing in my $.02 . Nothing more , nothing less.

But since a few of you have opened up this can of worms, let me voice my own thoughts here.

I sell old cars on the internet for a living. My wife and I do this full time, and we have for seven years. I have been in the car business for fifteen years. Selling used cars is a tough business. Everything that you have read or heard about the car business is absolutely true, and I have seen it all.

Our business is a bit different from the ususual "car lot" in many ways-
We operate more as investors, rather than salespeople. I operate my business from my home. I also have a brick and mortar dealership , which I rarely visit.

We operate as buyers for older , well kept M-B vehicles. 75% of our cars arrive as trades from larger dealerships. And yes, we do purchase vehicles from private owners who don't want to be bothered with selling their car in the newspaper.

We purchase, clean, service, and sell our vehicles by ourselves. My wife photographs the cars after I clean them. I write all of my advertisements myself, and I only post them for sale on ebay. I sell ALL of my cars without reserve, and I deal directly with my customers . I own all of my inventory, so unlike a salesman working for a dealership, I am a dealer principle.

I don't approach customers and ask them to purchase my cars, I simply auction them off and what they bring is what they sell for. I have three seller names on ebay (each for a different line of inventory), and my combined positives are over 140. I have sold over 200+ vehicles on ebay in the last 5 years. I keep an inventory of over 25 old MB's at once.

I fufill a demand for older cars from the south, with nice clean bodies. Most of my customers live in NY,CT, VT, and surrounding areas of the "rust belt". Generally, my customers pay cash, and they aren't bargain hunters. They enjoy the convenience of my service, which is what they pay for. When someone buys a car from me, they have a pretty good idea of what they are getting , I arrange all of the logistics for them. It's pretty painless.

My advertisements are some of the lengthiest on ebay. I write them in this manner because I would rather kill someone with pictures and information rather than to leave them with a bunch of questions. Either you love it or you hate it.

I don't persue customers, they find me, and they bid on my vehicles, and the customer determines what the car is worth. Sure, I make a profit. I'm not doing this for my health , let me assure you. Like it or not , our world is driven by profit. Do you also begrudge your stock broker when he sells you a stock for $35/share when his firm may have bought it at IPO for $1.25 ? Nope.

Sellers such as myself actually help the owners of these older MB's by creating demand, and by driving up the market. I never claim that my cars are new, or perfect. I infact include the following in each advertisement-
Please remember that you are bidding on an XX year old mercedes, IT WILL NOT BE PERFECT, please expect that the vehicle will have defects and wear and tear due to use and age.

This is a tough business, and a tough way to make a living. It's hard to convince people you've never met to pay you for a car that they've never seen. I try to treat people in the manner that I would prefer to be treated. 99.9% of the time I deal with really nice people and I have a good overall experience with them, and they are happy with their purchases.

I would appreciate it if people wouldn't try to judge someone that they don't know or understand. I realize that there are bad dealers out there, as well as bad customers too.

In the case of Mr.Carlton, it would appear that he was taken advantage of in his purchase, and now, he is attacking me, simply because I am a dealer. I had nothing to do with his purchase.

I gather that he was taken advantage of, because he states in one of his posts that he bought his car "total mileage unknown", or TMU. What this means is , the mileage cannot be certified because the odometer was broken at some point, or was replaced. States do not regulate odometer disclosure laws, these are federal and do not vary state to state.

TMU is a title brand, much like salvage, or rebuilt vehicle. Cars that are over 10 years of age can, if the seller elects, be sold mileage exempt, meaning that the seller no longer has to certify the mileage, but TMU means the seller is certifying that the mileage is incorrect on the odometer, and that the "total vehicle mileage is unknown".

There is a big difference between exempt, and tmu.

A seller can sell a vehicle of any vintage with actual, certified mileage, as I do.

Sorry to rant, but I began to see red.

PS- Thanks Steve for the vote of confidence, and to all others who stood up for me..

This is to Herb Phillips:

The aforementioned quote is the only reference to you personally. All of my other posts were in reference to used car dealers in general.

With regard to the aforementioned post, I simply believe that an SDL with 110K on the clock will typically sell for 7K-8K on ebay. There is more than enough data to support this position. No attack on you personally. If you have SDL's that are in pristine condition and can sell them for 12K and have a buyer that is satisfied, then more power to you. You clearly are providing a product and a service that virtually no other dealer provides, and you have customers that will pay for it. As you have stated, you are in this business to make money, and, there is nothing wrong with that.

If I implied that you have an inferior product that you buff up to show well and sell for a very high price, then you have my apology. I do not know you personally and I do not know the product that you offer.

Hell, if I could find an SDL that has been maintained by the dealer for all of its 110K and the interior was maintained by the PO, then I might pay 12K for it myself. However, I will say that these vehicles are few and far between IMHO.

BTW, I made a misstatement with regard to "true mileage unknown". The dealer sold the car "mileage exempt" as are all vehicles that have over 100K in the state of Florida, AFAIK.

Look at it this way their are a lot of old junk beat W126's out their. If you want a real nice one you could spend some time and money and dig one up. Or you could buy from someone like HerbPhillips, he does offer a good service. Plus since he does sell clean SDL's for $12k it helps our re-sale values to. Personaly I would rather pay more up front to get a perfect example.

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1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

Hope you come back and post when you have something to add. If everyone here knew everyone else in person this probably never would have been an issue. There are frequent exchanges on this board that are under the threshold of pleasant, (I know I post some of them) it is nothing personal and the crowd seems to roll with it.

Since I started the post let me be the last to post on it ---the car in question was sold on Sat for 8700.00 to a dealer in knoxville. The seller was also a dealer but this was her personal car and she was selling as an individual. It had ALL records and verified 106k mi. She had it listed at 8950.00 and when I spoke with her asking the right questions about cond and care-there was no doubt in my mind that this car had a pedigree plus it was my favorite color combo. At any rate I wanted to see the car with the idea of purchase--this is where the story got interesting. She said that she had promised to let a dealer friend look at the car last week and if he wanted it she planned to sell to him. There had been arecent divorce and she felt the need to cut all ties with this car. I explained that I could make sure she never saw it again as Atlanta is a big place and besides I would keep it garaged most of the time(drive very little) but she was adamant that she must keep her word and show it to the dealer first. I offered to pay the full asking price(subject to verifying the cond of the car) but she was really hung up on principle and her promise but she did say that she would call me by 5pm on Sst and let me know that she sold or that the dealer had renigged on 8700.00 and if that was the case I could meet her in Knoxville and buy. I emphasized if the dealer didn't want to pay her price or if she would sell earlier than Sat I would buy(subject to verifying cond)----
Bottom line she never called----for a highly principled person I was disappointed but not surprised. She might have been lying about the whole deal I don't know and at this point don't care cause I don't deal with liars,period.
I have restored (body off) some 15 Chevy and Corvettes and do professional appraisal work on collector cars and have a fair amount of experience over 35 yrs and I thought the car was worth up to 10,000 if it was EVERY thing she represented with all docs etc. If it went to a dealer my guess is it is now 12,000.00(but not from me)
My unsolitcited opinion on your discussion is--dealers have to make a living too--but I want to get the car before they do so I don't pay their markup. The most important factor is a person's integrity whether it be a dealer or individual. Tell the truth,and do what you say you will do.
Thanks to all who gave me some help on value and sorry it caused some harsh words among you----------
joel