wheels of fortune auction this weekend.... circus!

[rancherman]

these pics are just what was happening on the outskirts of town... still a mile or two from actual auction site. anyone hear of the chevy dealer's auction held this weekend? He had a bunch of REALLY low milage 'new' car leftovers, trade ins, etc that had been sitting in his farm for up to 50 years. I happened to drive through Pierce for giggles Sat morning, and WHAT A CIRCUS!! Decided to not get pulled into the stampede heading towards the main event! I figured the 10's of thousands of people there would make it pretty tough to see anything. It DID bring out some pretty neat cars for sale, parked along the streets leading up to the auction! Almost 500 cars that had from 1 mile and up sitting in a pasture for up to fifty years brought *****'s prices. Jay Leno, John Travolta, and others were said to have been there. Plus, the History Channel with the idiots from 'Top Gear' commentated a 3 hour 'special' broadcast later that evening. Here is my 'take' on this social event! The first thing that makes me really wonder is: How in the heck can a car dealer afford to stock pile ALL his trade-ins, and his 'left over' new-stock to just rust away in a field somewhere???? People that were interviewed about this dealer said HE didn't want to sell 'used' cars. People deserved NEW. The interviewers also stated they ALWAYS GOT fantastic bargains at that dealership. People in Norfolk, Omaha, and Sioux City would drive to Pierce Ne to buy their new Chevy. Did this weekends' event let the 'cat out of the bag' in regards to how much mark-up new car dealers are really hosing the general public with on new vehicles?? Next thing: the commentators 'awe' on the prices bid! DUH. Gather a bunch of people together with a lot of cash, and this sort of thing happens. I'd speculate if a person came up with the LAST can of 'spam' ...... and more than one person wanted it, it'd bring pretty big bucks too! Lastly, what has happened to the 'car crafting' hobby! It is lonnnnnng gone! with TV shows such as Gas monkey garage (Fast and loud)... and the multitudes of 'flipping' car shows just to make a dollar, pretty much has killed any hope of a younger person to 'build' his own. Seems like EVERY car that has been restored, renewed, or modified has been through a high dollar 'specialty shop'. Does anyone do their own work anymore??? The dude that was interviewed after he bought a couple of the mid 60's Chevy C10's... with 2-4 miles on the clock. (they brought from 10k, up to 45K) He "Didn't want to disclose" how many he purchased... in order to 'maintain' their "value". He claimed these trucks were "Americana". (oh how patriotic of him) I say bull! IT'S ABOUT THE MONEY with these guys, and how much they can milk out of the next owner! Nothing else. I had to laugh everytime I heard 'what are these cars worth'?? It had nothing to do with yesterdays auction prices! 90% of those vehicles were 'worth' 150 bucks a ton. period. If someone wanted to buy one of these relics to rebuild... 150 bucks would be a good starting point!

[diesel4life]

I feel your pain. When we were growing up (not that many years ago) we would buy cars (sometimes for literally 100 bucks) tweak em, tune em, run em. The nicer ones we might actually hang on to long enough to to register and insure, and make a project out of. Most of em either wound up in the woods (if they were 4x4s) or on the circle track out in the field. Sometimes they made it through the weekend, and we fixed em through the week and looked for more to replace the ones that didn't make it to run again the following weekend. The scrap man loved us, we lined em up at the road when we were done to make it easy for him to hook and run. We gave him all our buisiness and in return he paid us well. The point is, we were ALWAYS working on something. We lived to run em and wrench em. Sometimes things got a little crazy and dad had to intervene, but for the most part he let us go. We weren't out running the streets or drinking and driving or getting into drugs. All he had to do to check on us was stick his out the door, we were either in the garage fixin em or running em on the circle track or back in the woods. It doesn't seem like many kids have that same connection with vehicles these days. They're happy with a Honda Civic with a big fart can, a bunch of cheap chrome and a stereo that shakes the license plates... :rolleyes:JR

[JAG1]