Want to Sell my '76 450SL. Any Ideas?

[rzrob]

I need to sell my very clean '76 450SL. I want to get top dollar (like $8,000) as I think it's the cleanest one I've ever seen. Anyone got any ideas? I get compliments from strangers whenever I drive it. I live in Southern California.

RZ Rob

[kbflorida]

remember you don't lose anything by setting the reserve you want on EBay and seeing what bids you get. if you post a lot of good pictures that show your SL is in the great shape you describe, you might be surprised.

then again, a lot of people are leery of the 76 because of the cats issue.
(I have one, too, btw).

I saw on SL (an 83, I think) go for about $7500 there recently, and it wasn't in perfect shape.

[deanyel]

Every time I see a car on Ebay sell (allegedly) for a decent price I assume it's seller fraud of some sort. Prices on Ebay for used cars just aren't very good - with very rare exceptions. I think if you've got a nice car try to sit it out on the street somewhere, and run some locals ads.

[HomeRunPark]

Save yourself the time andn effort, just send it to me.

[kbflorida]

Check this current EBay link:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=6338&item=4558826098&rd=1

Looks to me like a beautiful SL, but more to the point, it has attracted
a number of bids and is up to $8600.

The original question on this post was a seller looking to get at least
$8000 for his SL, right? And if the 76 of RZRob is in truly great shape,
that's the point. Not hypothetical disaster scenarios on EBay.

Deanyel, I know what you mean. I have the same suspicion about EBay.
Yet the site seems to work - for cars and many other things. I think it works because many of the transactions are fair.

So let's see how much this current SL sells for...

[kbflorida]

now I'm suspicious, too. that beautiful 76 sl on EBay supposedly sold for over $10,000. But a check of the bids show that one guy with no history bid it up from $5000 to $10,000.

looks odd to me...

[kip Foss]

Check www.collectorcartraderonline.com and see what you are up against.

[deanyel]

Originally Posted by kbflorida

Deanyel, I know what you mean. I have the same suspicion about EBay.
Yet the site seems to work - for cars and many other things. I think it works because many of the transactions are fair.

There may be some areas of Ebay that work but there is scant evidence that Ebay Motors is actually working very well. If you watch it closely you realize that very rarely does a car actually sell. The cars with reserves rarely hit the reserve. Cars with a "buy it now" price usually get to only two-thirds or three-fourths of the buy it now price. Then there's the no reserve cars - which in theory sell because the high bidder wins. But I've watched no reserve cars go through the auction as many as five times in a row - back to back to back. So in theory the first four sales fell apart for some reason - and you see a lot of dealer seller's whinning about illegitimate bids and bad faith buyers. The far more likely explaination is that the no reserve cars are coming back repeatedly because the sellers are winning the bidding on their own cars. But Ebay counts each one of those as a sale. And now they have these "user ID private" auctions - which allow the sellers to bid on their own cars with impunity. The whole thing is perverse really. It's just not a viable forum for the sale of used automobiles.