TCG Stories

As it happens each year, I sat down to go over my taxes, and as part of that, assess how I made out on vehicles that were sold. The topic of whether you can make money on old / vintage vehicles has long been a point of contention for some enthusiasts, especially those defending their hobby to spouses who might otherwise suggest a re-allocation of spending. God help any of us boxed into that corner. You're going to need a SWAT team to emerge unscathed. 

Still, it bears analysis, especially since plenty of brokers and flippers seemingly make a decent living out of buying and selling interesting vehicles. In my case, I rarely buy anything for a flip; I mostly buy what interests me and if I can make money on it on the other side, great. The three cars sold in 2024 were my 1999 Porsche 911 C2; a 1995 Audi S6 Wagon; and a 1997 Lexus LX450 (80-Series Land Cruiser.) 

Can you make money on enthusiast vehicles? Yes, but it requires a careful assessment of market conditions and the state of the car or truck you're buying. 

The complicated math of time versus money 

The rough math shows that the 911 lost about $9,000; the S6 $6,300; and the LX450, $8,000. These are all very round numbers. There's a reason all of these vehicles were sold, and one of the primary drivers was their long-term value appreciation seemed low, and that is a rule I do live by, which is that anything I keep for an extended period, occupying useful real estate and space in my brain, must have a strong likelihood of future appreciation. 

The 996, despite losing the most, was the least painful. Why? Because those expenses represented about a grand total of 3 services to do peace-of-mind maintenance when my budget allowed. Addressing a noisy chain tensioner, replacing the air oil separator, repairing some oil leaks, and refinishing the curbed wheels really didn't suck up any of my time beyond bringing it to the shop. And, at the end of the day, I didn't need to do those repairs - but it seems prudent to do so, especially given the litany of concerns the Porsche crowd has stirred up about the 996's tendency to self-implode. 

The annoyance factor of repairs is a very real consideration for me. If it's easy to make the car better, and doesn't entail a bunch of other while you're in there fixes, my ability to enjoy the vehicle without fear of breakdown just went up significantly. 

The Audi was in the middle of the time/money equation. I liked the Audi, a lot, and had a great experience recovering it from Martha's Vineyard with the help of a good friend. However, the parts supply for the Audi has grown very thin, even for common replacement items like brake calipers. In addition, this car had very rough paint which basically made it impossible to ever eek out a win profit-wise because it would occur to any future buyer that the car needed a full respray to present well. However, I did buy this car for a very low amount ($1,500) which is why there was the smallest loss of the three vehicles. While the work done did increase my enjoyment of the car, all of it was also necessary to both drive well and make it easy to sell to the next owner. The 911, however, could have been used and sold without doing any of the work I did, and likely for not much of a hit to the sale price. 

The last one is the LX 450. This truck consumed a crap-ton of resources, mostly because I made the decision to rebuild the engine once we discovered a massive headgasket leak had been long festering. A few years ago, a mechanic friend of mine recommended simply selling it with the issues disclosed and moving on, effectively cutting my losses. I should have listened to him. While the truck emerged as a fine example of an 80 Series rig once all was said and done, the market for the 80 Series dipped sharply after the COVID surge in pricing ended, and while you might say it would have been difficult to predict that happening while prices were high, the amount of work required to make it a usable rig was also so extensive that the likelihood of future profit was effectively impossible.

One side note on the 80 Series: I did get to accomplish my goal of driving it on the beach on Martha's Vineyard before my family and I relocated to Maryland, so on the basis of simply enjoying a vehicle's natural capabilities without losing sleep over ROI, the Lexus performed admirably - and did so before the headgasket failure became evident, showcasing its impressive durability driving over sand dunes while guzzling coolant. 

Can you win with project vehicles? Yes.

In my next installment, I'll talk about a few cars I've owned (and some I still do) that are still "net positives" in terms of money spent and current market value, along with one that was my biggest windfall financially to date despite being a massive project.

While these results are heavily dictated by market conditions (and right now, things are not exactly rosy), it goes to show that even huge undertakings can be worthwhile endeavors if the initial investment is low and the timing works out in your favor. 

More to come! 

I have become resigned to the fact that no matter how hard you try to prove otherwise, eBay and PayPal are going to side on behalf of buyers, time and again. As someone who sells a decent amount each year on eBay, I probably encounter one buyer each year who claims a refund on the grounds of not reading a listing carefully and there essentially zero hesitation on the part of the platform to issue a refund to the buyer. 

This is frustrating, but it's the result of a system whereby bad sellers screwed over enough customers that the pendulum swung back the other way, and created an opportunity for unscrupulous buyers to scam decent vendors. The pendulum, thus far, has not returned to the middle, so the emphasis on preserving buyer trust remains high. 

Recently, I incurred a fair amount of stress asking my brother-in-law to receive a set of wheels from a Facebook Marketplace seller in Virginia. This was due to the proximity between my sibling-in-law and the seller, and because I couldn't sneak away to meet him. For an additional $50, he agreed to drive the hour to their house and drop off the wheels (which were an exceedingly rare set of Zauber AMG replicas in a great staggered setup.)

After incurring the wrath of my wife who diverted her travel by 20 minutes to grab them while she was having lunch with my sister-in-law, I yanked them out of the box only to find the seller a.) doesn't know how to measure or b.) was a total liar and scam artist. They were not the 17x8 and 17x9 as advertised, but rather 16x7 and 16x8, which wouldn't even begin to fit on my 1992 500E. Fortunately for me, he specifically requested PayPal for payment, and I opted to send it for goods and services, paying the additional fee in the process. The seller, of course, went dark once I mentioned he was a total dumbass and needed a lesson in remedial measuring, but to PayPal's credit, they got the seller to agree to a refund. I shipped the wheels back to him (at my cost, of course - so that money is lost) but I was so enraged looking at these things and knowing how many favors were exchanged just to get them home.

PayPal isn't perfect, but when you as the buyer opt to pay for the security of buyer protection, there is a bit of a covenant struck whereby the service has to at least try to understand why you're unhappy. I fortunately had several screenshots of the seller confirming he knew how to measure and could tell his ass from his elbows, so all told, I was fairly well covered from his ineptness. 

Unless the seller is your best pal, it's far cheaper to pay the necessary fees and stop jokers like the one I encountered from ruining your day, 

As someone who owns a PR agency for my full-time work, I've learned how to spot the hidden message in news announcements over the years. And in terms of Amelia Island 2025, it's clear Broad Arrow didn't have the best of times. 

In 2024, they were quick to release an announcement citing the year-over-year improvements, sell-through rate, and how significantly the auction grew from 2023. Total sales literally doubled over the first year of its auction showcase at Amelia, jumping from $31M to eclipsing $63M in 2024. That's a massive spike, and even though it was somewhat unrepeatable, one would expect a strong result in '25 - especially since we were already seeing significant fracturing of the collector car market in '24, safely past the overused excuse of COVID-flation and "return to normal" pricing. 

In 2025, total sales dipped to $61.7 million. Sell-through rate also fell, dropping from 92 percent in 2024 to 88 percent in '25. (And for another clue as to the overall lack of enthusiasm for the results, the word count of the Broad Arrow press release went from 278 in 2024 to 152 in 2025 - c'mon, guys, don't be that obvious about how disappointing the auction was.) 

I've often wondered just how much weight the Hagerty name carries in the auction arena. They've been famous for drawing down events that they've "bought," including Radwood - and as a publicly traded enterprise, you can bet there's someone on the back end looking at the output, both in terms of manpower and dollars, exhausted on events like Amelia and asking whether the juice is worth the squeeze. 

In the auction universe, it's impossible to deny that the model of online auctions for some of the most sought-after cars in the world will continue to grow when you compare the expense and liability headaches of organizing a large-scale public event. No matter my gripes with the BaT comment army, it's hard to deny that enterprises like theirs and Cars & Bids will face any significant competition from live gatherings any time soon. 

For once in my life, I'm in the corner of the "bad guy." I'm rooting for the villain to win. I want to see the Joker burn down Gotham City. 

In yet another instance of an honest seller being absolutely raked over the coals for the offense of driving an unrestored car, BaT lost what looked like a very honest specimen of an air-cooled Porsche 911 to a young gun who saw an opportunity and pounced. The seller - who seemed like every ounce the guy he said he was, just a long-term Porsche owner from way before it was cool - got spooked by the comments section due to his 911 displaying a few issues that are entirely typical of a driver-quality 911. You know, the kind of car the everyman can afford. 

He, to his credit, said, "No thanks," and sold the car to Dodi Auto Sales. If you monitor TikTok or Instagram to any extent, Dodi shows up often with his tales of rescuing Porsches, both good and bad, from long-term owners. His father ran a similar business focused on Mercedes products. Dodi got in touch with the seller and made him an offer on the spot to buy the car before the BaT auction ended. 

Good for him. Seriously, good for him. He had a car that he loved. He kept it in good order. For the grievous offense of the engine being a little wet (ALL 911s THAT AREN'T CONCOURS-RESTORED LEAK, JUST SAYIN') and for failing smog in the enviro-commie hell of California, he was told by numerous car-nerds that his car was junk and needed complete restoration. Imagine having a real-deal turnkey sports car for years that you just fire up and drive and you get some douchebag lawyer from Long Island telling the world that the car is on the brink of total self-destruction - would you stick around? 

Oh, and here's my favorite revelation from the comment section from some mouth-breather who explains why he and other commenters tear down auctions like this fella's listing for his dearly-loved 911 SC: "The few requests for this car to get a smog check or the one question if it leaks any oil don’t constitute “all this negativity” we serious buyers and those trying to muster the balls to bid on a expensive vehicle sight unseen..."

Just...piss off. I'm sorry for the vulgarity but I am not a rich man. I buy cars sight unseen all the time. Trust the seller via a series of phone calls, scan over any records that may be available, and schedule a PPI. That's all you have to do. Dragging the seller through the mud is a poor excuse for not having the stones to do the actual work that real enthusiasts actually do. 

So, dealers and poachers, I hope you're regularly scanning each and every BaT auction for opportunities like these to help sellers find a way out of anonymous commenter hell that has ruined the experience for yet another innocent victim. As of this writing, Dodi has already sold the subject 911. Good for them. 

You may have noticed that sites like Bring A Trailer have incorporated a feature whereby bidders have the chance to work directly with the seller when a car doesn't sell. There's obvious reasons for this - and I'm sure it works reasonably well. Apparently, scams have materialized whereby an individual of nefarious means is able to infiltrate the seller/buyer channel and portray themselves as being able to sell the car to the runner-up bidder. 

Well, that's not good. And sadly, sellers of pricey exotic and collector cars are getting damn near close to falling for it. 

Running parallel to this is another phenomenon of second chances: sellers who then re-list their cars on multiple auction sites. The second chance in this instance is a rival auction platform, usually one with a smaller following but that still has plenty of traction online, meaning the world sees your car no sale-ing multiple times, typically with a lower final bid price.

It's a downside to the pressure sellers inevitably feel when their car doesn't sell at auction. Let's face it - if you've decided to auction your car, you probably have some urgency behind the decision to part ways. However, instead of running to the next auction platform, sellers should take a deep breath and at least attempt to make improvements before the next sale attempt, or otherwise demonstrate you don't hate the thing so much that you'll push it on three different websites inside of a month. 

If you use The Common Gear to store your records and create a "base camp," if you will, for your sales efforts, buyers will be less likely to speculate why you're selling your car. It's like interviewing a job candidate who has worked for three different employers 3.5 years: eventually, people start to wonder why. Even if you choose to roll the dice on different platforms, your profile on The Common Gear - which is shareable across all auction sites with one beautiful, consistent, URL - helps avoid the resale stench that permeates second chance offers and re-list dynamics. 

Create your Common Gear account, today, for free, and begin uploading your records, receipts, and improvements to your enthusiast vehicles. 

I hate to say this, but sometimes - in this hobby - it makes sense to spend more. Now, mind you, I don't say this from the perspective of whole cars, as I'm not in the position to just write a blank check. My approach is routinely driven by finding special vehicles in the sort of condition that allows them to be purchased as projects with a reasonable maintenance budget. 

Sure, I'd love to buy a pristine 964 chassis 911 Turbo. Maybe someday? Who knows. I need to stop staring at the Ryan Friedman website of all their current inventory. It just makes me sad. 

However, as a hobbyist like many of you, I try to navigate these channels the best way I can. Case in point: I wanted to buy some new wheels for my 1990 911 Carrera 4, to go along with the hardtop I purchased at the end of 2024. This car is likely to be the most valuable in my fleet now and into the future, so it made sense to invest in it further, which is why I held my breath and bought the hardtop. While a cabriolet will never be as desirable as a hardtop model, the gulf between the two is so significant that selling the cabrio for a  coupe doesn't close the gap enough to be sensible. The hardtop, however, helps the math make more sense, especially as it relates to increasing its desirability should it ever go up for sale. 

Now, I was pondering a set of "sewer cover" wheels from the 928, as these were the "winter fitment" option when the 964 was new. However, I had also been eyeing the 5-spoke wheels that Speedline manufactured on behalf of in-house Porsche tuner RUF back in the day. Ultimately, a set of these RUF wheels needing basic cosmetic refurbishment came up for sale from my preferred Porsche dismantler, Autobahn Dismantling, and I paid roughly $300 over a set of 928 rollers needing to be sandblasted and painted due to most of them being polished from the factory.

Did I want to blow the money right now? Not at all. Does the 964 need new wheels and tires? Nope, the D90s currently on it are in great shape and the tires near-new. However, there will be a day when you cannot buy a set of RUF Speedlines for the price I paid, just like the company in France that makes the hardtop will someday cease to exist. This is basic math at this point that for cars worthy of the investment, it just makes sense to pay more while you can afford it (which is why I was so enraged when the body shop I'd been patronizing seemingly lost valuable parts of my 190E 2.3-16 Cosworth's body kit). 

As a friend of mine who is building a garage would say, "The cheapest day to start building is today - the price will never go any lower." That is the universe we live in, and while I always recommend being financially prudent, in some cases, the prudent approach is to buy the rarest and cleanest parts you can until a time when you can buy the whole car.

Most people would say the restoration I took on with my junkyard find 1986 Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3-16 Cosworth was incredibly risky. It was; I banked most of my gamble on restoring a highly rusty, poorly repaired Cosworth on the knowledge that there was a small body shop that did proper metal repair for a pittance of professional shop costs. When the owner of that humble enterprise called me and said it was my turn to bring the Cosworth in, I was overjoyed. It meant my gamble paid off - I would be able to restore my high school dream car for far less than it should cost to literally cut out half of its rusty carcass and weld in new metal. 

At the end of the day, the car was more or less completed. The hard work was done. The only work not done was repainting the door jams, and I'm just going to live with that for now (they match, but there's a visible masking line.) However, the gentleman who did the work - let's call him Bob - worked for the guy who owned the space (let's call him Bill). Bill, sadly, passed away last year and was a gem of a human being. Bob, it turns out, was really only motivated to work by Bill, and without Bill, Bob seems content to let the whole operation collapse. In the same vein, he will complain that he never has any money, which is tied directly to his ability to start and complete projects in a timely fashion. Bill made sure he kept on task, but on his own, Bob is fairly useless.  

Because Bob is perpetually hard up for money, it's hard to not begin to wonder about his ethics when a valuable part goes missing. For instance: one of the best moves I made when I first bought the Cosworth was track down an entire spare body kit. If you know much about these limited-production Mercedes, you may know that the body kit is worth about $4,000 in terms of street value. I paid no where near that - this was 2018, I believe I paid $800 - and so, I happily left the replacement body kit with Bob because it was in much better shape than the one on the car.

However, I told Bob: under no uncertain terms, do not destroy the old body kit. I want it. It will be a useful set of spare parts. Except, I moved to Maryland in August '23. Bob was more or less working with no supervision, as Bill fell ill and stopped coming to the shop. When I recently asked Bob where my front air dam and side skirts were, he pointed his finger back at me, indicating I must have taken them. 

Plot twist: I didn't, and Bob knows this. Sadly, I think Bob either stupidly threw them away or sold them on Marketplace for a quick grand. While I couldn't have predicted that I would relocate 7 hours away during the course of this multi-year restoration, I am still disappointed that someone I trusted could be so irresponsible. I'm also mad at myself for not being more engaged and ensuring all of my physical property was accounted for, but up to that point, I had no reason to believe they wouldn't be. The shop had been fairly astute about keeping my old parts and putting them in the car when they were no longer needed.  

We've searched every place they could have been left; I'm pretty confident they're gone for good. Lesson learned: don't let your eyes off of your restoration or other long-term project no matter the trust level, and if you can't physically check into the shop on a regular basis, find a proxy to do so on your behalf. It may seem crazy, but if helps keep everyone honest, it's worth every penny to hire your buddy for beer and scratch-off tickets to monitor progress when you can't physically do it yourself. Now, I'm off to eBay to search for some overpriced Cosworth parts to have on the shelf for a rainy day. 

Here at TCG, we consider ourselves fortunate to be in a unique position with a solution for digital record keeping that has historically been challenging to solve. One of the bigger issues we see is that even so-called leaders and influencers in the enthusiast/hobby car world is a lack of understanding about the importance of digitized records and how they should serve the interests of owners, present and future.

Recently, Doug Tabbutt of Switch Cars talked about how a 911 GT3 his dealership has had the privilege of selling more than once came with omissions in the service record file. He knows this because Doug has built, to his credit, an encyclopedic-knowledge base of all 996/997 GT cars in his GTvault database. So, Doug believes that because the dealer that sold the car after him omitted some records that you can't rely on service records to tell a car's story - and that he could "fix" this thanks to holding the records in his hand.

Two problems: one, he only possesses this knowledge for a very small group of limited-production cars that rarely come up for sale. And two, when the records are held by the dealer or a broker like Doug, this problem WILL continue to occur. When the records are digitized and held by a third-party - like the car's actual owner - transparency is maintained. This is what The Common Gear provides, as the records are in the hands of the private owners and fully transferable from caretaker to caretaker.

The issue of records "deletion" will never be solved. Even if you still hand a bunch of 3-ring binders over to the next caretaker, you can strip out any paper records that could prove problematic. But leaving the records entirely in the hands of dealers (and let's be clear - Doug IS a dealer), you will forever be exposing private owners to the perils of records manipulation. 

The recent - and ongoing - California wildfires are absolutely devastating. There's no other way to describe it. The losses are staggering, and while human life has largely been spared, we ache for those that have perished. 

Photos have been trickling in of property losses, and among them, the destruction of specialty and vintage vehicles. If you wade into any number of Facebook groups, these photos are often met with reactions like, "They're only metal, people have lost their lives," or "Who cares? It's just a car." Sure, fair enough. But those cars are often owned for one, if not two,reasons: they hold some sentimental value for its owners, or they were purchased for their long-term value potential. Either reason is valid. And many caretakers of vintage cars have continued to own them after nostalgia combined with surprising price increases that justified their continued presence in the garage. 

Now, for a tough question: how many of those owners backed up vital records, certificate of authenticity, service invoices, in a digital format? Or, were most lost in the fire, just like the cars themselves? I know a gentleman from Hollywood who owns north of $2 million in collector-grade air-cooled VWs and Porsches, and when I asked him how his records were backed up, he pointed to a file cabinet. Obviously, many of us save things this way, but how sobering is it to think that the hundreds of thousands of dollars in restoration receipts could suddenly be gone?

As we increasingly see in high-risk areas like Florida, insurance carriers are simply pulling out of risky markets. I do wonder how the wildfires will affect how even collector policy writers look at insuring cars in high-risk states, especially when well-heeled collectors could simply store their collection elsewhere. 

But what about the folks outside of the 1 percent who still own special vehicles, cars and trucks with significant time and money behind them? Where's the evidence of your work? The Common Gear is a platform that allows you to securely upload your records so the digital footprint of that car or truck is never lost, and you're equipped with ample evidence to show your insurance carrier of the investment you've made that justifies your pay-out. Being made whole and all that, as empty as this promise seems after you lose everything. At the end of the day, however, if it's between you and the guy who doesn't have any paperwork behind his valuation claim, which one do you think the insurance company is going to pay the agreed amount to? We all want to believe the likes of Hagerty will do right by us in times of need, but the simple truth is you just don't know until you're in the unfortunate position of having to find out. 

We are truly sorry for the heartbreak many in California are experiencing right now. There are no words. At The Common Gear, we stand ready to digitize your records and preserve your car's legacy. Create a free account today. 

We try not to beat our own chest here at The Common Gear, but in reviewing a recent Bring A Trailer listing for a car that previously belonged to yours truly, we see our value proposition in vibrant, living color. 

The car in question was my 1995 Audi S6 Avant. I didn't realize the gentleman who bought it promptly sold it three weeks later, but I'm not surprised. He was hot to trot when I posted it for sale and barely haggled. I figured he had plans for the car, but didn't realize it included attempting a quick flip. He wasn't successful, ultimately, with the S6 selling for $500 less than he paid me. But what's significant is the comments in the BaT listing wherein a commenter (oh, those dreaded commenters!) posted a link to the digital portfolio I had created for the S6 over the years I owned it. 

First, a quick tutorial: when you enter a vehicle into the TCG portal, and then begin to post updates (repairs, upgrades, general anecdotes), all of that data is catalogued "behind" that VIN number. Then, when you decide to sell the car, you can create a for sale listing that pulls all of that data into one convenient URL - and when I go to sell a car, I always drop that link into my craigslist, Marketplace, and any forum ads that I post. Well, that link was shared for my S6 in the auction comments section, with the original poster and a potential bidder commenting that the URL was a wealth of information for anyone considering buying the car from afar. 

Really, folks, this is exactly the point of TCG. We wanted to create an extension of your auction listing, or simply offer a robust way to sell a car on your own, knowing what it lacks in professional photos (though you can absolutely add those) or the concierge-grade experience of an auction service (though for a fee, we'll give you the white-glove treatment and build your car's portfolio from start to finish), you get back in total control over providing an exploded view of the value you've added to a car over the months or years of your ownership.

For all my railing against BAT, it is encouraging to see listings like these that demonstrate the incredible value TCG provides as a means of extending the value of an auction, or any for sale listing - so create a free account today and begin tracking your vehicle's progress and history.