Flipping cars- right or wrong?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Moo, Nov 27, 2020.

  1. Moo

    Moo

    Now, I recently sold our old Ford Ranger (more gutless and rustier than any bay I've ever owned) as spares or repairs on Facebook. The buyer turned up, bought it, and a couple of days later it was back up for a few hundred quid more and a slightly less honest description. I noticed it had sold within an hour, and then, a couple of days later, the next person had it back up for sale with an even less honest description and another few hundred quid on the price tag.
    All in all, quite a humorous situation - my conscience is clear and I've watched a truck fit for the scrapyard click up more miles over the last few weeks, travelling between owners, than its covered in the last five years.

    But then a bay came up for sale, also on Facebook, for £1500: one family owner since 1980, they just couldn't afford the welding and wanted it to go to someone who'd give it the love, blood, and bank drain it deserves. I messaged a couple of mates who'd love it as an affordable project and registered immediate interest on their behalf, but it had already gone. Ah well, never mind.

    Fast forward a few days and the lucky new owner has done sweet Fanny Adams apart from pick it up, cart it a couple of miles down the road, and put it back up for sale at three times the price!!! And I'm positively apoplectic about it.

    Am I being hypocritical here? I find it fairly humorous that a battered old ranger can be flipped from pillar to post and fair play to each new owner who's made a quick Bob out of it... but the bay???? Why am I so angry that someone's done exactly the same?

    Is it the fact that its being priced out of some deserving person's price bracket thats riled me? Or is it the brazenly cashing in on the bus scene without even attempting to hide the fact that you've not put an ounce of effort into making more than a good few quid???

    Its a funny old world.
     
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  2. Dubs

    Dubs Sponsor supporter extraordinaire

    It kinda sucks doesn’t it, but that’s “scene tax” for you... there will always be folks ready to take advantage of the gullible

    I once sold a type 181 project for £700, to a chap that assured me he was going to lovingly restore it... 2 weeks later I watched it sell on eBay for £1400. And then a week later it was back on again for £2000. The only thing that had been done to it was a few bits had been robbed of it, and it had gone down south, and then up north. Oh, and like your experience, the descriptions got less honest every time :rolleyes:
     
  3. My mate does this all the time. He recently bought a mint standard beetle for 5k. I offered him 6k to leave it alone but no, 2 weeks later it's slammed and got a narrowed beam and sold to some young twerp for 8k. He does it with all makes too, Porsche, Yank motors all sorts. He's a *****.
     
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  4. Each to their own and all that, but I really don't like the "got camber" look, must drive like a pig too.
     
  5. Probably like driving a plastic pig :easter:
     
  6. Zed

    Zed Gradually getting grumpier

    Doesn't matter how it drives if you're only going to do idiot* laps banging out drum and bass.

    *The real word is unsuitable for TLB. :)
     
  7. Scraping and Shaking bits of rust off onto the road as it goes along :D
     
  8. Soggz

    Soggz An inquisitive supporter

    Who cares?
    If it’s out of your hands with a few quid in your pocket...
     
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  9. Merlin Cat

    Merlin Cat Moderator

    It annoys me too @Moo
     
  10. scrooge95

    scrooge95 Moderator and piggy bank keeper

    More irksome because your mates actually wanted it I suppose, @Moo
    I'd be annoyed too.
    But I guess we're all guilty of it in some way, shape, or form.
    I bet there's a good few of us who've spotted something at a car boot sale, jumble sale, charity shop etc (back when those things still existed... oh glory pre-covid days!), and known we could flog it on ebay for twice the price.
    Funnily though, when I started reading and saw that it was a family owned Bay for £1500, the first thing I thought was SCAM, or complete pile of rust held together with gaffer tape. Did the new (short term) owner get three times the price? Lets hope not, eh ;)
     
  11. I think there are a lot of clever folks out there who don't work but make a good living out of buying stuff cheap and selling on ebay for a profit. Its a bit like Bargain Hunt and the many other similar tv programs where folks search out cheap items and try to sell for a profit. The used car market is full of small dealers who buy cheap cars, spruce them up and sell them on for a profit. A young chap not far from me buys vw cars with low mileage from the auctions and sells them on for a profit, he has no premises but sells from his home and keeps the for sale cars in his garden.
     
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  12. I seen a splitty van that sold as "immaculate" for £19k in the summer. It was then on sale at a showroom at the end of the summer for just under £11k, so I assume the buyer eventually cut their losses on it. It quickly got bought and immediately re-listed on ebay for £16k... it didn't sell so it kept getting reduced. They then put it on for auction and got about £10k ish in the end I think.
    Each seller had listed it as needing a couple of "small" spots of welding. The reality was the bits they were describing as a bit of welding were the bits where the structure had completely corroded away. The rest of it had about 6 inches of underseal on it.
    Capitalism works by people buying things below their market value and selling them on for profit. For me, the problem is the deceitful nature of people buying something for its true value, then lying about its condition to spin a profit out ofsome poor unsuspecting sucker. Often they might then be left with an issue they can't afford to sort out, so they have to choose between having flushed money they can't afford down the drain, or, they get dragged into then trying to pass the problem on to somebody else. But when they start also trying to make profit from the dud, then they're probably as bad as the one who deceived them in the first place. The bay market is definitely filled with more than a fair share of those sellers to be fair
     
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  13. Soggz

    Soggz An inquisitive supporter

    I like a bit of buying and selling.
    People give me all sorts of stuff from sheds, that they don’t want/need anymore.
    I often flog it off on Farcebook market place, and use the money for stuff I need/want.
    Only a couple of months ago, someone gave me a perfectly working pushbike, which I then cleaned up, put some more brake blocks in, and sold for £140.00!
    I then bought this white Eurosport with £100 of it! CE53A44E-DB87-4141-8D92-F52D4D8747B2.jpeg Its 90% restored, too! Fully powder coated frame and swing arm rebuilt. Forks rebuilt, new YSS rear shock, callipers rebuilt, just needs the tank sorting.
    The shock alone is £265.00 to buy!
    Came with all relevant docs, now in my name. For sale soon,maybe.
     
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  14. I thought flipping cars is what dealers do. Buy it cheap, clean and polish it and sell it on for a profit. A young chap near me does that, he buys low mileage modern vw cars from a local auction and spruces them up and sells them on from his house. Simple.
     
  15. Moo

    Moo

    Yeah, I get the "buy cheap, spruce it it up, make a quick buck", and thats absolutely fair enough (and to be honest, something I've done myself)... but its the buying with no intention of sprucing it up to make a pretty hefty profit because there's a scene that will pay for it, and in doing so you're putting it financially out of reach of someone who would absolutely have loved the opportunity - it's that that boils my liver filtered coffee!

    Like I said, I can see I'm being hypocritical here: for one car its fine, for another it's not. Maybe I'm just missing the whole camaraderie of the scene - the days before kids when you'd all pile round a mate's, completely carefree, and swap bits, and tinker have now gone and got all grown up and cut-throat.

    Could also explain why Mrs Moo has banned me from ever running another business unsupervised :oops:
     
    Last edited: Nov 28, 2020
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  16. Is it time for another Wheeler Dealers thread?
     
  17. I think its the tv programs showing folks that its possible to buy items (antiques?) and just sell them on for a quick profit. Its a form of business that ordinary folks can do successfully. Folks with money buy cheap houses and flats at auctions, do them up cheaply and sell them on for a profit. Its a growing business. I feel the marketplace for our vans is suffering the same trend, with buyers less willing to pay the proper price but wanting to buy a good van on the cheap just to flip it. I bet there are also a few who buy project vans very cheap and flip them for a small profit.
     
    Sick Boy likes this.
  18. Nothing is new , there's been people flipping cars since the wheel was invented , what I do find annoying is people finding antique 'stuff' at charity shops and banging it up for massive profit on the bay of Evil , something that seems to be gathering momentum .
    It's clearly tat but with a good description anything sells , and then there's the Westfalia guy ...

    Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk
     
  19. A fool and his money are soon parted. There are always people who have more money than sense and often don't bother to research the value of things. I don't see anything wrong with turning a profit on the back of their laziness.
     
  20. CollyP

    CollyP Moderator

    I thought this may have been about Lance Stroll :rolleyes:
     
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