My car’s been for sale for a few weeks now with interesting responses. All the advertising is channelled through online mediums nowadays, even with newspaper adverts you enter details through the newspaper’s website. So I’ve done for a mixed bag of the mainstream means such as ebay and auto trader, some more local and general ones like local newspapers and free-ads type websites, to specialist websites such as piston heads and Alfa-specialists. Even Gumtree thrown in there as well.

So here’s 3 interesting trends I’ve spotted:

1. Sale value – what something is truly worth is derived from what someone will pay for it, stemmed from a conversation with a local accountant concerning ‘value’ and ‘worth’. Simple. The difficulty though is making sure that that person sees the true worth and value in any particular item, rather than just the ‘normal’ market value. So with this car it is admitably being advertised on the high side, and although that automatically rules out those who are just looking at shear price and a bargain for bargain’s sake, it is genuinely worth this to someone who wants this particular type of car and the peace of mind that it’s sorted for years to come. It actually stands me at much more cost-wise after the purchase price and works, but of course it’s the worth to the buyer not my cost that determines the value. The conclusion when I spoke with the Alfa specialist – you really need to target the right kind of buyer who will appreciate this ‘cost’ value, otherwise it’s a long drawn our affair waiting for someone almost randomly to appear.

2. Silly Offers - there’s been a few, surprisingly through text messages out the blue from websites offering to take-any-car-now. I did try one and entered the details of the car, all very easy and straight forward. Alas the value was ridiculously low, with of course behind these glitzy website they are taking them at low prices to sell them on at a higher ones. It feels wrong though the way in which they advertise it as a bargain – all up for clever marketing, but this just don’t seem right.

3. Scans – a classic email was received from a guy wanting to but the car for his son but he’s away and will have to pay through PayPal (PayPal cleverly mentioned I guess, as known to be secure). Last minute there was a problem with paying his agent to collect, so could I pay the agent if he paid into my PayPal on top of the purchase price. Sounds too good to be true. I’m told the money was transferred to me but I never received, yet the payment was needed to the agent. What was amusing is how long the emails were, someone trying their dawn hardest to spin the story to the n’th degree, and then the final icing on the cake being an email from the “’Metropolitan Police’ threatening action for non-payment to the agent!

Anyway, the sale goes on.