“The canary in the coal mine” is one of my favorite expressions. It’s up there with the butterfly effect, which I broadly define as observing otherwise innocuous signals and considering their future implications. The collector car market is in an intriguing place at the moment, with key indicators simultaneously indicating investors are insulated from other market forces while also suggesting some of the results we’ve written about here are potentially inflated.
I don’t claim to be a financial wizard or anything close to an expert, but I do have a good bead on the collector car market, especially for so-called “youngtimer” classics that have heated up big time over the last few years. COVID wrecked many things, including any sense of normalcy in the modern collector car space. Prices for the same model over the course of mere weeks can ricochet to dizzying heights and back down to a disappointing floor, especially when an ambitious seller agrees to list with no reserve.
A startup I like an awful lot called Blue Tail Aero points to similar instability in the bizjet market, as a recent blog post cites industry expert Ascend’s senior appraiser and principal aviation analyst Syed Zaidi. According to Zaidi, “…the surge of new users into the business aircraft market had led to a “60 percent rise in midsize jet values from a year ago and approximately 45 percent higher for very light and super-midsize jets. Long-range jets values increased by 20 percent year-over-year.”
Keyword here: new users. I can’t recall a time where so many consumers were flush with cash and had no idea what they were doing. You see this with collector cars and apparently with private jets as well. When it’s just one sector, it’s easy to tell yourself there’s nothing to see here. But when a trusted source of expertise on the private aircraft market points to similar signs of instability, it’s time to ask yourself if the adults have left the room when it comes to collecting.
The question becomes this: how do you protect yourself and your investments? As Blue Tail explains and as we at The Common Gear have long believed, it comes down to maintenance and building the digital portfolio of the car or plane of choice. If you live in a storm-prone coastal region, investing in hurricane-proof windows is a smart move; if you acquire cars or planes in an uncertain market, investing in maintenance and securely storing your records of improvement can help protect your purchase in the long-run and potentially boost its value.
The Common Gear is the premier destination for securely digitizing your records. Create your free account here today.