Damn, this car is WAYYYY over priced on E-Bay..... what do you think ?
 

Surfing through ebay and came upon this 300D. I have to admit, it does look good but the bidding has gone out of hand. I cannot believe that this vehicle is at 7,500 right now and it still has 5 days left on the auction. What do you guys think this car will sell for ? Do you think that those are actual miles ? You can find just as nice ones for about 5,000 dollars so why the heck is everyone bidding on this one ?




http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=2483149527&category=6330

Not overpriced apparently as the bids have set the price so someone's willing to pay it.

For what the car is, one of these days, we'll be WISHING we could find this much machinery at that price!

Seems like a lot now, I know, but with that few miles on a car that was built to last forever and looks showroom, if you think about it, not many new cars (if any) can be had for that price and ANYTHING at that price is a total POS inside and out, unlike Merc's of that era.

Any car that you could buy new for that price will be in the junkyard in four years (unless you are in an accident with it before that, then you'll be dead and it'll be totalled.) The merc will still be going strong in ten years (assuming there will be oil to run it on.)

For that kind of money, I hope they fix the gauges first.

in the first pic of the instrument cluster it looks like the car is off, but the oil pressure gauge is reading something.
in the next pic of the whole dash it looks normal...
:confused:

Kamil,

True value of anything is what the market will bear in a willing buyer, willing seller transaction.

P E H

Re: Damn, this car is WAYYYY over priced on E-Bay..... what do you think ?
 

I agree with TomJ and PEH, the car's worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it (or, in the case of some auctions, what two someones are willing to pay for it)! Most of us are only looking at it on eBay, but one or more of those bidders may have actually checked the car out and found it to be just as good as it looks. Also, one has to figure personal desires into it. A prospective buyer may hanker for a particular year and/or color, he may want to start with as nice an example as possible instead of buying one as a project, and he may want the car now instead of maybe someday. To some folks, for lots of different reasons, that kind of money just isn't that much. Remember the one that went for, what, $16k or so (sorry, I don't have it bookmarked) a while back? Who knows what might have happened with this current auction if it had (1) a higher reserve and (2) a "Buy it now" price of, say, $10-12k? It might have ended by now.

Personally, I've been looking for an '84-'85 diesel for several months, not as a collector's item, but as a daily driver. The pickings so far have been pretty slim (due in part to my location). If you know where I can pick one up that's "just as nice" as this one is claimed to be (verifiable very low miles, immaculate condition, all records, etc.) for about $5k, then please drop me a line, would you? I'm willing to travel. I might end up anguishing over the choice of driving it daily or selling it a profit, but I'm willing to suffer...


-- eskimo

Eskimo,

When I saw your handle and you said slim pickings because of your location I thought you lived in AK or northern Canada. But alas, you are an Eskimo from FL. Hmmm.

Keep watching Ebay and you will probably find the MB you want. I found 2 I wanted without much of a wait and bought both of them.

P E H

$7600 for a mint, low-mile example is nothing, you better get used to it. I've seen a used W123 that got sold for over $20K. A car is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it and what the seller is willing to accept. As these cars age and rust, there are fewer and fewer examples. I think the price of W123's is slowly going up and they're becoming harder to find. That's why I've snatched 2 of them already.:D

I occasionally get discouraged, but I haven't thrown in the towel. Unlike other sorts of projects, though, there's not much in the way of incremental progress - you find one when you find one, and until then, you've got nothing. I guess I could always buy a Mityvac just as a show of good faith.

I check eBay sometimes, but I haven't been impressed with what I've found so far, and searching based on location is tedious (have to search multiple locations to cover the search area I'm willing to consider). I do check the Autotrader and Cars.com pretty much daily, just haven't succeeded in finding a winner yet. Some nice guys here on the board have also offered to keep an eye open for me. The good news, of course, is that there's always the chance of finding a one- or two-owner, really clean, "southern car" down here. They don't turn up that often, but it could happen. I'm still trying to decide if some "want to buy" ads are worth trying.

In addition to limited availability, I've also found some of the prospective sellers to be amazingly flakey (won't return calls, won't be forthcoming with relevant details about the car, etc.) On a local car, that's bad enough, but it's the kiss of death when trying to deal with someone from any distance. It's just people - I'm sure that if I were trying to sell a car, I'd run into my share of flakey prospective buyers!

Seriously, if there's anything in the way of progress, it would simply be increased familiarity with what's out there, what I might consider paying for it, and what to look for. The more I know, the better my ability to strike while the iron's hot when a winner turns up.


-- eskimo

All of the sudden e-bay is gleaming with LOW MILEAGE mercedes vehicles. There are about four 300Ds' with 70,000 miles. :confused: I don't know how true the odometer readings are but I am positive that there are some fakes in there as well. Like the one from above.....The gauges are broken and the car only has 70,000 miles. Can they be broken because someone was messing around with the instrument cluster ? I'm not able to say if someone was tinkering in there but after seeing the broken gauges it just puts a thought in my mind....

Kamil

BUT, are you aware that some Ebay sellers will set up alias accounts to use to drive up the bidding! They just bid on their own auction and drive the price up, up, up...
If they end up being the highest bidder of their own product, then no transaction takes place - and you'll probably see that item up for sale again soon.
The "Ebay market price" is not the true market price anyway.

I totally agree that the broken gauges are a red flag. Low mileage mercedes can be very valuable, but you gotta be careful. A lot of times a high mileage car with extensive records is a better value than a low mileage car with no records. IMO, mileage is a relatively small part of the equation. What matters most to me is condition and past maintenance.

I don't think this is easy to do since you have to provide a credit card number or similar means of ID verification every time you open an Ebay account. I'm not saying it's impossible to have alias accounts, but I don't think it's a common practice on Ebay.

Well, if you really think about it...... You have an ebay account, your dad has one, your brother, your sister, your best friend, your co-workers ETC ETC..

It is extrememly easy to do

It's of course very sensible to be cautious, especially when buying a ~20 year old car that's famous for "aging gracefully". If one is paying a premium price for "actual miles," then it behooves one to verify the legitimacy of those miles. If something seems suspicious (the gauges, for example), then one should do what one can to clear it up. If it can't be cleared up satisfactorily, then one can either take on the additional risk or can walk away.

If I may be allowed to nitpick, though, I'll say that thinking something is unlikely isn't the same as being "positive" that it isn't true. Not busting your chops here, just having a different opinion about the strength of the word to use.

I agree, there's probably some deception going on with some of the cars. Every time one of these cars sells for a big pot of money, it encourages other sellers, both straight and crooked, to get their goods up for auction. The higher the stakes, the greater the incentive to cheat.


-- eskimo