Topic: 1973 350SE sold for £20500 at auction

[ptashek]

The recent MB Club UK magazine has some auction reports, and one included a 1973 350SE, icon gold with "tan leather" interior (looks like bamboo in the pic) and less than 33k miles, selling for just over 23000 (correction) 20500 pounds sterling.

I'm not a big fan of super-low mileage garage queens, but it seems there's some increasing W116 interest from the "serious collector" crowd who assign value to such things.

In another recent enough auction a low mileage 6.9 sold for something like 69k sterling.

Maybe I should park up Goldie and promote her to my retirement fund asset. So very much not!

[UTn_boy]

I often wonder if the auctioning off of these particular models is "padded" or "fixed" so they sell for some astronomical price in order for someone to try to corner the market.  This happens all of the time with other models/makes.  The car owner and/or the auction house owner/manager will pay people to bid the car way up.  If it sells for some ridiculous amount then those hired hands get a cut of the action. 

[Mick74]

You may have a point about "bidding up", as I have noticed the same users bidding on some items on online auctions, sometimes increasing the bid by a ridiculous amount. On one site, I'm almost certain that one user id belongs to one of the people running the auction site. But this is an age old auction practice.
You see such a 6.9 sell for big money, but yet great cars for much less sit unsold, so it is strange. Unless some of the "big fish" prefer auctions to dealing face to face with buyers in the real world.
I did see that 350SE and was going to tell a mutual friend of ours with a similar, low mileage 350SE. If he hasn't seen it, it will make his day!

[Harv]

I often wonder if the auctioning off of these particular models is "padded" or "fixed" so they sell for some astronomical price in order for someone to try to corner the market.  This happens all of the time with other models/makes.  The car owner and/or the auction house owner/manager will pay people to bid the car way up.  If it sells for some ridiculous amount then those hired hands get a cut of the action.

This is all very true. Traditional auction houses have plants in the audience or "on the phone" to bid up cars to the reserve or beyond. It isn't illegal surprisingly.

Take any traditional auction result with a giant grain of salt. The majority of them aren't true results.

[UTn_boy]

I often wonder if the auctioning off of these particular models is "padded" or "fixed" so they sell for some astronomical price in order for someone to try to corner the market.  This happens all of the time with other models/makes.  The car owner and/or the auction house owner/manager will pay people to bid the car way up.  If it sells for some ridiculous amount then those hired hands get a cut of the action.

This is all very true. Traditional auction houses have plants in the audience or "on the phone" to bid up cars to the reserve or beyond. It isn't illegal surprisingly.

Take any traditional auction result with a giant grain of salt. The majority of them aren't true results.

And THIS is one of the MANY reasons it's so misleading to use auction house/auction website sales figures as a basis for placing a value on a car.  They skew the market in the worst way possible.  I hope that one day they're reprimanded for partaking in such debauchery.  They're all corrupt. 

Regarding Mick's comment.....this is another reason why/how the market gets so skewed.  When someone sees a car just like theirs sell for ungodly amounts of money most of them (not all) assume by default that their car must be worth just as much......regardless of condition!  Buying cars through private parties is the only way to go.  Auction houses/websites, dealers, and car flippers are the worst places to buy a car from. 

[marku]

I thought "ramping" the price was illegal certainly is on ebay.

[Harv]

I thought "ramping" the price was illegal certainly is on ebay.

Not when the auction house sets the rules. You want to play in their house, you play by their rules. Shill bidding is prohibited on eBay I believe.

I know for a fact that is how these auction houses like RM, Sotherbys, etc recruit cars to sell. They tell these sellers they can guarantee their car will be bid to XX,XXX because basically they can via their shill bidders. Then if they get a qualified bidder who will actually pay that, they did their job. If they don't, everyone stays hush hush so both parties aren't embarrassed. 

[Type17]

...I did see that 350SE and was going to tell a mutual friend of ours with a similar, low mileage 350SE. If he hasn't seen it, it will make his day!

I got the MB Club's Gazette and did see that auction result, but I too wondered about the "bidding up" factor.


The MB Club valuer did examine my car* in 2017 and put a value of €22.5k on it (~stg£19.4k / USD$25k at present), which I was surprised at. The only real value of an item is what people are prepared to give for it on a given day...






*It's very original, but has higher mileage at 41,700 miles, and is relatively low-spec with cloth seats, no sunroof, aircon or cruise control, although it does have electric windows and everything works.