In January of this year, I wrote a piece about the “good old days” as a term applied to searches for old iron and focused on the perils and pitfalls I encountered along the way.
The main issue was lack of important information in the paper ads found in auto buy/sell publications via a few of my personal experiences from that pre-internet era.
Jim Sutherland
Things have changed dramatically since the dawn of a totally wired world that now relies heavily upon e-communication. But not everything is what it seems in e-world.
For example, is the car of your dreams the one you see in an online ad on the many buy/sell pages available in a cyber world? If so, is it real or a scam designed to separate you from your hard-earned dough after a clever grift?
Most online ads are legitimate but there are enough scam ads out there to make the ad a potential minefield for buyers. The good thing is the seller may show his hand when a buyer asks for detailed photos of the rig in question and gets stonewalled by the seller. The seller’s reluctance to provide suitable pics may mean he is unable to provide more photos because he poached them off the internet and has a limited number of pics of the vehicle in question since he doesn’t actually own it.
On the other hand, there are plenty of cyber lowlifes who chase ads as fake buyers whose only goal is to separate sellers from their vehicles and/or cash. The scam artists’ usual grift is to issue an immediate offer for the vehicle with zero due diligence to determine the condition of the vehicle. One of the typical red flags will be a confusing butchery of the English language during the communication process.
It is also important to remember this old chestnut when scouring the cyber ads for a vintage vehicle: “If it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t” during a search for old cars because most vintage rides are no longer priced at realistic prices.
It would take a very fortunate series of events to discover a rare old car at a decent price in 2024, the kind of luck usually found in lottery winners.
Vintage vehicle prices rocketed up at an alarming rate because many sellers believe their rusty old hulk has a value driven up by the feature stars sold at a high-end auction, the ones that have undergone a six-figure restoration-or pampered and barely driven during their entire existences. Reality may not part of the equation for the sellers, but hallucinogenic drug use may indeed be a part of their worlds.
Consequently, it is very likely a rusty old vehicle that needs a ton of work will carry an obscenely high price tag, along with a surly owner who will include a paragraph full of angry threats directed toward buyers who are just not willing to show up with cash for his asking price.
But at least it is a real ad and not a conscience-free fraud artist preying upon the terminally gullible who like to chase rainbows on the internet. Welcome to the “good new days” in the old car hobby.
Jim Sutherland
BY: Jim Sutherland
Jim Sutherland is a veteran automotive writer whose work has been published by many major print and online publications. The list includes Calgary Herald, The Truth About Cars, Red Deer Advocate, RPM Magazine, Edmonton Journal, Montreal Gazette, Windsor Star, Vancouver Province, and Post Media Wheels Section.
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