Well as you may or may not have read, I recently launched myself into a new experience and goodness was it fun! To be honest I had done it once before a few years ago but that was a Fiat 500 which we sold for 4500 Euro, we were aiming for 5000 so we got fairly close (in these auctions if the minimum is not achieved then you can recontact the highest bidder and they can then choose to purchase the car or not, so they did and came down from France with a van and trailer).
This new case was more serious as we were aiming for a reserve price of 15,000 Euro so a different kettle of fish. The car in this case was a 1979 Jeep originally owned by the Italian singer Renato Zero so we also had some history to help us. My good mate Riccardo is Italian and speaks, understands and writes very little English so I stepped in to help him GIVEN that the best market to sell classic cars is the north of Europe and not really Italy so the English language is essential.
I placed an advert on Carandclassic.com and generated ALOT of interest but not a single bid so I consulted with the experts and we then submitted the Jeep to auction. The auction runs for one week and during this week anyone can bid on the car BUT you must first register and place a bank guarantee before you can bid. So every bidder is serious and this eliminates the Ebay strategy of your mates bidding up the price of course.
We received a total of 21 bids and the price eventually arrived at 14400 Euro and I accepted straight away, by lowering the minimum level as we arrived towards the last few minutes of the auction. It was an amazing ride!! To prevent last second bidders, any bid that arrives in the final 2 minutes of the auction automatically extends the acution by another 3 minutes and this happened several times (maybe some bidders do not know these fairly new rules!!).
We will not of course receive 14400 Euro as the auction house takes 6 percent from the seller leaving about 13500 but considering Riccardo has been trying to sell this Jeep for years I count this as a great result! NEXT we will try the Simca!!! See a few pics below.
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