cars auction lambrecht collection

[stripedelete]

Looking back 50+ years at an optimal investment strategy is not the point.  Of course gold and some stocks would pay off better.  Every person on this thread could go back and make BETTER financial decisions.

The guy could have sold each one of those cars for $50 profit back in the day and put a "second garage" on his farm house with the proceeds.  Yea, that investment would have paid off real well.  Maybe I should update that example to people who take out perfectly fine counter tops and replace them with 10k worth of granite today. 

The ol codger managed to live till 95 and leave his grandkids with a couple million dollars.  I bet if you told him that would happen when he was 20 years old in 1938 (depression era) he would have laughed at you. 

Amen. He's laughin at all those who tood him those cars are never gonna be worth nothing.  Course, I don't think he knew thered be so many dumbasses ith money to burn 50 years later either.

You both better keep your day jobs.

[MaximRecoil]

Looking back 50+ years at an optimal investment strategy is not the point.  Of course gold and some stocks would pay off better.  Every person on this thread could go back and make BETTER financial decisions.

The guy could have sold each one of those cars for $50 profit back in the day and put a "second garage" on his farm house with the proceeds.  Yea, that investment would have paid off real well.  Maybe I should update that example to people who take out perfectly fine counter tops and replace them with 10k worth of granite today. 

The ol codger managed to live till 95 and leave his grandkids with a couple million dollars.  I bet if you told him that would happen when he was 20 years old in 1938 (depression era) he would have laughed at you. 

It didn't pay off for him at all actually. He didn't even break even. In terms of buying power, he lost about 80% on his investment.

Your examples of a "second garage" and whatnot are not necessarily investments, they are expenditures for things wanted or needed; things that have a function and are to be used. Those cars sitting out in a field had no function at all; they weren't used for anything. Since the guy didn't even care about cars, they didn't even serve the function of being objects of his interest as a collector.

Yes, it turned out great for whoever ends up with the money when he dies, because it is just free money to them, they had nothing invested in the first place. However, it would have turned out a lot better if he would have invested all of that money in something that would have at the very least kept pace with inflation. Then he'd have about $12.5 million instead of $2.5 million. 

[Tilar]

Thought this was pretty awesome


http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VjqYHGoHAOg&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVjqYHGoHAOg

That is very cool! I'd have bet the carb would need rebuilt at a minimum. 

[MaximRecoil]

I didn't have to do much to get my 318 '69 Charger started after it had sat in the Maine woods for 17 years. The carburetor's throttle was seized, but I didn't have to rebuild it. I removed it, and with some penetrating oil and a small butane torch, got the throttle to move freely. I also replaced some tuneup parts (points, condenser, rotor button, distributor cap, and spark plugs), though I don't know if I needed to or not, I just did it as a matter of course before even trying to start it. Then I put in a battery and it started right up and ran pretty good. Oh, the alternator was seized too, but that didn't prevent it from starting and running. I replaced the alternator the next day.

[Cooter]

Looking back 50+ years at an optimal investment strategy is not the point.  Of course gold and some stocks would pay off better.  Every person on this thread could go back and make BETTER financial decisions.

The guy could have sold each one of those cars for $50 profit back in the day and put a "second garage" on his farm house with the proceeds.  Yea, that investment would have paid off real well.  Maybe I should update that example to people who take out perfectly fine counter tops and replace them with 10k worth of granite today.  
B
The ol codger managed to live till 95 and leave his grandkids with a couple million dollars.  I bet if you told him that would happen when he was 20 years old in 1938 (depression era) he would have laughed at you.  

Amen. He's laughin at all those who tood him those cars are never gonna be worth nothing.  Course, I don't think he knew thered be so many dumbasses ith money to burn 50 years later either.

You both better keep your day jobs.

I'll do just that. And continue to help folks like the many here who can't figure out Chargers.....

Dude still made money. Looking at this from aninflation standpoint is like the dumbass remark about having your time in a car and you'llnever get paid for that. Stupid. Nobody restores an antique car for a hobby, looking to get paid for every second they have in it. If they do, they are idiots that soon realize the error of their ways.

[MaximRecoil]

Dude still made money.

Trading enough money to purchase 475 new cars, for only enough money to purchase 95 new cars, is not a case of making money. It is a case of losing money, and lots of it.

[Cooter]

Dude still made money.

Trading enough money to purchase 475 new cars, for only enough money to purchase 95 new cars, is not a case of making money. It is a case of losing money, and lots of it.

Obviously you just don't read what's posted. They weren't all new cars professor. Many were trade ins that sold today for much more than the gas guzzling turds they were when traded.

[MaximRecoil]

Obviously you just don't read what's posted. They weren't all new cars professor. Many were trade ins that sold today for much more than the gas guzzling turds they were when traded.

Looking over the auction list, 50 of them are indicated as being new (they have an MSO instead of a title). 68 of them had less than 100,000 miles, with 31 of those having less than 50,000 miles. I only see 2 listed with over 100,000 miles, and the rest of them have nothing listed with regard to new/used/miles.

$2.5 million isn't even enough money to buy 475 average used cars:

"According to the BTS in 2009 (latest available) the average price for a used vehicle in the U.S. was $8483."

His cars sold for an average of $5,263 each at the recent auction. He lost money.

[ws23rt]

Is this an argument about how mister Lambrecht managed his affairs?    So is he a fool for living his life the way he did?
We are fifty years from the time these cars were put to pasture and speculating on his motives on future investment value seems just plain silly.
I suspect that he knew full well that he was storing new cars and as the years passed I am sure he thought about them from time to time.

Do we know how well he lived the rest of his life?  Was he in need?   Most important was he content?

There is no doubt a mix of investors and collectors had a good time as well as all the onlookers like us.
The collector car hobby is richer for this auction.  

Some folks become millionaires and lose it all only to do it over and over.
Some make enough to have a good life.  And some have hard luck.  

IMHO spending life ones life making the biggest pile of money possible is not what living is all about.

I told my kids that I intend for my last check to bounce.  That may not have been such a good thing to tell them

[Ghoste]

I agree.

[tsmithae]

Is this an argument about how mister Lambrecht managed his affairs?    So is he a fool for living his life the way he did?
We are fifty years from the time these cars were put to pasture and speculating on his motives on future investment value seems just plain silly.
I suspect that he knew full well that he was storing new cars and as the years passed I am sure he thought about them from time to time.

Do we know how well he lived the rest of his life?  Was he in need?   Most important was he content?

There is no doubt a mix of investors and collectors had a good time as well as all the onlookers like us.
The collector car hobby is richer for this auction.  

Some folks become millionaires and lose it all only to do it over and over.
Some make enough to have a good life.  And some have hard luck.  

IMHO spending life ones life making the biggest pile of money possible is not what living is all about.

I told my kids that I intend for my last check to bounce.  That may not have been such a good thing to tell them

Well said. 

[Cooter]

Is this an argument about how mister Lambrecht managed his affairs?    So is he a fool for living his life the way he did?
We are fifty years from the time these cars were put to pasture and speculating on his motives on future investment value seems just plain silly.
I suspect that he knew full well that he was storing new cars and as the years passed I am sure he thought about them from time to time.

Do we know how well he lived the rest of his life?  Was he in need?   Most important was he content?

There is no doubt a mix of investors and collectors had a good time as well as all the onlookers like us.
The collector car hobby is richer for this auction.  

Some folks become millionaires and lose it all only to do it over and over.
Some make enough to have a good life.  And some have hard luck.  

IMHO spending life ones life making the biggest pile of money possible is not what living is all about.

I told my kids that I intend for my last check to bounce.  That may not have been such a good thing to tell them

Sorry...I let myself attempt to try and talk horse sense to a jackass and broke my cardinal rule...

Obviously it cannot be done. I realize that yet again, but whaddya gonna do?

[ws23rt]

Is this an argument about how mister Lambrecht managed his affairs?    So is he a fool for living his life the way he did?
We are fifty years from the time these cars were put to pasture and speculating on his motives on future investment value seems just plain silly.
I suspect that he knew full well that he was storing new cars and as the years passed I am sure he thought about them from time to time.

Do we know how well he lived the rest of his life?  Was he in need?   Most important was he content?

There is no doubt a mix of investors and collectors had a good time as well as all the onlookers like us.
The collector car hobby is richer for this auction.  

Some folks become millionaires and lose it all only to do it over and over.
Some make enough to have a good life.  And some have hard luck.  

IMHO spending life ones life making the biggest pile of money possible is not what living is all about.

I told my kids that I intend for my last check to bounce.  That may not have been such a good thing to tell them

Sorry...I let myself attempt to try and talk horse sense to a jackass and broke my cardinal rule...

Obviously it cannot be done. I realize that yet again, but whaddya gonna do?

Let your conscience be your guide
BTW some people have never heard horse sense ---It is a whole new language for some.

[stripedelete]

Is this an argument about how mister Lambrecht managed his affairs?    So is he a fool for living his life the way he did?
We are fifty years from the time these cars were put to pasture and speculating on his motives on future investment value seems just plain silly.
I suspect that he knew full well that he was storing new cars and as the years passed I am sure he thought about them from time to time.

Do we know how well he lived the rest of his life?  Was he in need?   Most important was he content?

There is no doubt a mix of investors and collectors had a good time as well as all the onlookers like us.
The collector car hobby is richer for this auction.  

Some folks become millionaires and lose it all only to do it over and over.
Some make enough to have a good life.  And some have hard luck.  

IMHO spending life ones life making the biggest pile of money possible is not what living is all about.

I told my kids that I intend for my last check to bounce.  That may not have been such a good thing to tell them

Kum ba ya aside, the discussion in the later part of this thread was, did he actually come out ahead financially by keeping the cars?  (He did not.)
It was not a judgement on the mans life, or speculation that he was nuts (which i think he was).

Actually,  I understood  his original strategy had something to do with cornering the used car market during his time as a dealer.  A one man cash-for-clunkers thinning of the heard(nuts!).  Again, the later was a financial analysis.   - because he never ended up selling them. 

If I had to speculate, he knew, very early on, the cars were not going to turn out to be a sound  investment.  But, just like the guy with Road Runner rotting in the weeds that he won't, he (the dealer) was enjoying the attention, interaction (and local celebrity) he received from those that begged to buy them.      

[MaximRecoil]

Is this an argument about how mister Lambrecht managed his affairs?

No, it isn't, which negates the rest of your post.

It is an argument over whether he made money or not on those cars. He didn't.

Sorry...I let myself attempt to try and talk horse sense to a jackass and broke my cardinal rule...

Obviously it cannot be done. I realize that yet again, but whaddya gonna do?

You claimed that he made money, which is false. Making erroneous claims does not = talking sense, "horse" or otherwise.

[ws23rt]

Is this an argument about how mister Lambrecht managed his affairs?

No, it isn't, which negates the rest of your post.

It is an argument over whether he made money or not on those cars. He didn't.

Sorry...I let myself attempt to try and talk horse sense to a jackass and broke my cardinal rule...

Obviously it cannot be done. I realize that yet again, but whaddya gonna do?

You claimed that he made money, which is false. Making erroneous claims does not = talking sense, "horse" or otherwise.

So I ask a couple of rhetorical questions in my post on the topic of the Lambrecht collection and an answer to one of them negated what I had to say about the topic.

Should I just delete what I had to say in order to help clean up this  thread?

[Tilar]

How do you guys figure he didn't make money?  Just because he might not have made the figure that your mind thinks he should have made doesn't mean he didn't make more money than he would have selling those cars 50 years ago. Short of the corvette he doubled his money on most everything he had and probably made 5 times what most of those trade-ins were worth when he got them.  Add that to the fact that he is the only man in the history of the world to EVER look out the back door of his house and see a double handful of brand new 50 year old cars and pickups in his back yard that he owns. NOBODY else will ever be able to say that.

[stripedelete]

Is this an argument about how mister Lambrecht managed his affairs?

No, it isn't, which negates the rest of your post.

It is an argument over whether he made money or not on those cars. He didn't.

Sorry...I let myself attempt to try and talk horse sense to a jackass and broke my cardinal rule...

Obviously it cannot be done. I realize that yet again, but whaddya gonna do?

You claimed that he made money, which is false. Making erroneous claims does not = talking sense, "horse" or otherwise.

So I ask a couple of rhetorical questions in my post on the topic of the Lambrecht collection and an answer to one of them negated what I had to say about the topic.

Should I just delete what I had to say in order to help clean up this  thread?

I get what your saying.  Re-read your post. The first question is not rhetorical.  The answer is no.  When you read further back the discussion (not argument) was an analysis of whether or not he ended up coming out ahead.      

[stripedelete]

......Short of the corvette he doubled his money on most everything he had and probably made 5 times what most of those trade-ins were worth when he got them...

I dont' know if anyone said he did not make money.  Or if it was said it's not was actually meant.   

The alternative to making 5 times on his investment in used cars, was to double his money 5 times. 
I.e  $100 X 5 = 500   100x2x2x2x2x2 = $3,200

In many people eyes, that's losing money.

[ws23rt]

Is this an argument about how mister Lambrecht managed his affairs?

No, it isn't, which negates the rest of your post.

It is an argument over whether he made money or not on those cars. He didn't.

Sorry...I let myself attempt to try and talk horse sense to a jackass and broke my cardinal rule...

Obviously it cannot be done. I realize that yet again, but whaddya gonna do?

You claimed that he made money, which is false. Making erroneous claims does not = talking sense, "horse" or otherwise.

So I ask a couple of rhetorical questions in my post on the topic of the Lambrecht collection and an answer to one of them negated what I had to say about the topic.

Should I just delete what I had to say in order to help clean up this  thread?

I get what your saying.  Re-read your post. The first question is not rhetorical.  The answer is no.  When you read further back the discussion (not argument) was an analysis of whether or not he ended up coming out ahead.      

I get it.---It was however intended to be  rhetorical.  The question about whether or not he made money infers a question about his intent. (Managing his affairs).  If he made a good decision or a poor one it was a decision that was his affair.

[bill440rt]

I don't think he did so bad. Getting roughly $5300 each for some clapped out, 4-door/wagon bread-n-butter shit turds seems pretty good to me. 
Good for him & his grandchildren. 

[Cooter]

There's a brand new 1957 Plymouth in Tulsa....I hear its pretty famous. Unlike many of these cars...




I didn't see any offers of $148k for it with its 4.8 miles...hell, I didn't even see an offer for $3k which is about what it woukda cost new.
Yet, that 58 pick up brings $148k....didn't somebody buy that truck that had all the pieces missing for like $7500?
So even if one looked at it from a flippers perspective ( which btw imo is ludacris) a 1967 chevy pickup with 40k miles on it even if traded in 1968 is anywhere near $7500?.
Dude still made money.

[MaximRecoil]

How do you guys figure he didn't make money?

Because he lost money.

Just because he might not have made the figure that your mind thinks he should have made doesn't mean he didn't make more money than he would have selling those cars 50 years ago.

He didn't make any money at all. He lost money. If he would have sold them way back when, he wouldn't have lost money, he would have made money instead.

Short of the corvette he doubled his money on most everything he had and probably made 5 times what most of those trade-ins were worth when he got them.  Add that to the fact that he is the only man in the history of the world to EVER look out the back door of his house and see a double handful of brand new 50 year old cars and pickups in his back yard that he owns. NOBODY else will ever be able to say that.

His cars sold for an average of $5,263 each. That's way less than the average cost of a new car today, and that's significantly less than the average cost of a used car today as well. He traded X buying power for buying power that is a lot less than X.

It seems that some of the people on this thread don't understand inflation; i.e., they are comparing what he paid for them to what they sold for without taking into account that a dollar had far more value when he bought them than it does today. If you bought an average new car in 1960 for $3,000, parked it and did nothing with it for 53 years, and then sold it for $6,000, did you:

a. Double your money
b. Take a major loss

The answer is "b", because the $3,000 you paid out had average new car buying power at the time, and $6,000 has way less than average new car buying power in 2013.

I don't think he did so bad. Getting roughly $5300 each for some clapped out, 4-door/wagon bread-n-butter shit turds seems pretty good to me.  
Good for him & his grandchildren.  

It's not bad if he bought it for less than he sold it for. In 1960 the average annual wage was ~$4,000, so if you bought a new car for $3,000, that's 75% of the average annual wage. If you then sit on that car for decades, doing absolutely nothing with it, and sell it for $5,300, well, the average annual wage in 2011 was ~$43,000. Note that this correlates quite well with the average new car price of ~$30,000 today (still about 75% of the average annual wage). So we have a case of buying high and selling low. Remember, the value (buying power) of a dollar is pretty much in a constant decline, so you can't just directly compare the number of dollar bills when two transactions are separated by a lot of time, not if you want a meaningful comparison anyway.

Dude still made money.

This claim has already been shown to be false.

[Tilar]

How do you guys figure he didn't make money?

Because he lost money.  Wrong answer.

Just because he might not have made the figure that your mind thinks he should have made doesn't mean he didn't make more money than he would have selling those cars 50 years ago.

He didn't make any money at all. He lost money.  Wrong again

His cars sold for an average of $5,263 each. That's way less than the average cost of a new car today, Here's the problem! Apparently you missed the part where he is no longer a new car dealer and he wasn't selling today's new 2013 cars, They were 40 and 50+ year old new cars.

Dude still made money.

This claim has already been shown to be false.

As Ronald Reagan would say, There you go again. And you're still wrong. The man made money any way you look at it.  

[Cooter]

Thank you Tilar. At least someone gets it.