We car geeks like to discuss the goings-on over at car auction site Bring A Trailer. Often those discussions revolve around price — things like how a pile of rust roughly in the shape of a Porsche 911 can sell for almost $9,000 or how someone accidentally bid $100,000 on an Acura NSX. And now I think something just happened at Bring A Trailer that is very worthy of discussion: an International Scout – actually, wait, it’s technically two International Scouts, sort of (a project frame and a parts car) just sold for the incredible sum of $10.
Yes, $10. The auction was listed as having no reserve, and damn, was that proven accurate. Ten bucks. That’s less than the cost of a McDonalds Quarter Pounder Meal. With cheese, I mean. And instead of a floppy burger the winner of the auction gets the frame and front tub of a 1980 International Scout II, along with a complete – if quite rusty – 1976 International Scout equipped with a 345 cubic inch V8 and a four-speed manual transmission.
Here’s what the auction description says about what’s included in the auction:
This project vehicle includes the frame and front tub from a 1980 International Harvester Scout II as well as a 1976 Scout II body and drivetrain. The 1980 frame remained under original ownership until the seller’s purchase in 2025, and it was refinished and fitted with Rough Country leaf springs within the same year. The 1976 vehicle is equipped with a 345ci V8, a four-speed manual transmission, and a dual-range transfer case, and it featured faded red paint over beige upholstery. Additional equipment includes 15″ steel wheels, a white hardtop, and a tow ball. This non-running project is offered at no reserve with a clean Michigan title for the 1980 vehicle and a bill of sale for the 1976 donor vehicle.
This has to be the lowest BaT auction sale price ever, right? There’s been some cars that have sold for $100, like this Fiat 124, but that’s still ten times as much money as this one. It’s definitely the lowest price an International Scout II has sold for on the site, as you can see on this chart:
Ten bucks. By weight, that would be, let’s see, a Scout II is about 3,600 pounds, and I figure there’s what, maybe a few hundred pounds of frame and tub from the “project” Scout? Let’s call it 4,000 pounds of Scout to keep the math easy, which means that the winner of this auction spent $0.0025 per pound of International Scout II, which is, as you may have guessed, a hell of a deal.
Just in scrap metal prices, which range from six cents to 22 cents per pound for steel, the buyer would make a killing (the project is worth a few hundred bucks in scrap, though shipping prices will eat into that). I hope the buyer doesn’t decide to do that, of course. Far better would be to make one running Scout II from this frame and the parts Scout and just tell every single person you encounter in the car that you paid $10 for the car at auction.
There’s a tow ball included in this auction. That tow ball alone is probably worth $10. Same with a single one of these wheels:
Bring A Trailer charges a flat fee of $99 to list the car, so the seller is already in the hole for $89 with this sale. Then, on top of that, the buyer pays a 5% (that’d be a nickel in this case) or 10% (a dime), but there’s also a minimum fee of $250, 25 times the sale price.
I can’t imagine the seller feels great about this, but I imagine the buyer is pretty delighted. Maybe the seller is just happy to have it all gone without having to scrap it?
I hope both of them, together, at least feel a bit of pride in undertaking what has to be the lowest Bring A Trailer transaction ever in the site’s 245,000-auction history. Sales like this give unreasonable hope for all of us unrealistically cheap bastards with terrible impulse control, and that’s worth more than even $10 can buy. Maybe even $20.
Were they trying to be retro to the days when they just shared links to actual projects that didn’t run? I understand what “No Reserve” means, but I think it’s frankly unfair for them to start a listing at below covering their fees, or even scrap value.
Last year, my local junkyard came to my house with a flatbed and paid me $200 for a Mazda Miata partout heap that had no body panels or top, a bad engine and trans, didn’t even roll. I don’t think anyone pulled a single part off of it at the yard.
There is a floor to the value of a car, and it’s scummy to let people pay you for the privilege of giving something away.
Back in 2008 I gave my 1966 2.25-liter diesel powered Land Rover Series II to a good friend of mine. He rebuilt it and still owns it. Sometimes, taking a financial hit can feel soo much better than making money…
It’s one thing to give it away, but it’s another to have to pay someone else to take it. That’s pretty rough.
Yes, that’s true. Even if his intention was altruistic, the seller still shot himself in the foot.
Here’s a repeat of my Public Service Announcement on auction sites;
I recently had the misfortume of using Cars & Bids to sell my car.
Halfway thru my auction a brand new user posted a comment which was a lie, obviously designed to depress the bidding on the car. It was along the lines of “I know this car and it was in an accident and the axle was broken.” It was complete and total BS. C&B kept it up for hours without taking it down, refused to re-start the auction, refused to make it one of their highlighted auctions, refused to let me increase the reserve (which they pressure you to keep low), and refused to do ANYTHING to salvage the auction. It wouldn’t have cost them anything. Instead I got “Oh we still have lots of confidence your auction will turn out fine!!!!”. Total BS.
So not one of the people that bid BEFORE that lying comment bid again after, and interest absolutely dried up. It was like hitting a brick wall. The auction came in UNDER the reserve I set (which again, they pressure you to keep low as a requirement of them allowing the auction at all) and then THEY MADE UP THE DIFFERENCE so the sale would go through.
So I’ve never gone back there and I will never use it again and EVERYONE SHOULD BE AWARE THAT C&B is complete and total BS. End of rant
I mean if you personally testified on the auction that the comment wasn’t true then I don’t think it really would’ve had much of an effect to any serious bidder. I don’t see what relisting would’ve really accomplished.
I did respond of course but THAT comment was also taken down with the offending comment. Even if it had stayed up, I think it absolutely would have still been compromised. Would YOU spend 50K on a car on an auction site after any sort of allegation like that had been made? Certainly the offending Ahole thought not…
SELLER BEWARE
If I was the seller I would not sell it unless I made a ton of profit selling on BAT. WHY anyone wouldn’t put a salvage minimum or just sell it for parts. I would at least make it impossible to pick up the vehicle
Whatever the condition, the buyer is closer to getting a Scout on the road than Volkswagen.
#COTDnomination
“Then, on top of that, the buyer pays a 5% (that’d be a half dollar in this case) or 10% (a buck)”
FIFY
“Sales like this give unreasonable hope for all of us unrealistically cheap bastards with terrible impulse control, and that’s worth more than even $10 can buy. Maybe even $20.”
Which is exactly why I prowl the bike ads on FBM and CL and ended up with a garage and attic full of old bikes.
Love the topshot 🙂
That baby’s Pure Michigan if I’ve ever seen it! Minnesota Mint I tell you!
So BaT’s review process is pretty much out the window. Like anything is possible now?
Right – you’re probably going to need 2 trailers or clever loading to pick these up.
BaTT Bring a Two Trailers
BaLOT (Bring at Least One Trailer)
Score another win for private equity….
Imagine just placing a $10 bid as a laugh and you win. Now what to do with this heap
As someone who has won some cheap auctions for stuff I didn’t really need- there’s a good chance there was a “well, shit” moment there when the logistics hit home.
I have a bunch of industrial conveyor components in my shed I bought years ago as a lot for $100. Theoretically it’s worth thousands but I haven’t managed to find the time to sell it. At the same auction I bought an ultrasonic bath for $100 as well and made $1300 off of it so I’m still in the green.
See if you can sell them as a lot to an industrial supply reseller. I sold some junk to Radwell and took a hit, but it got it out of my basement.
That sounds like my one go at using a local liquidation reseller, btw. They box random returned goods together and you bid it on it like eBay; I spent under $300 on mine and used several of the items (bath faucet, cordless blower, hand-held shower wand, some smaller things) and sold the rest, ending up with $200 profit and the items I’m still using today. But it was a PITA and I never did it again.
I snagged some laboratory drying ovens. Did I make some money reselling them? Yes. Was it annoying taking two trips to pick them up in the middle of the day because that’s when the lab was open but they juuuuuust didn’t all fit in my Element at the same time? Also yes.
That’s a very odd thing to buy for the lulz.
I knew a guy who owned a junkyard and frequented DOD auctions. Picked up a bunch of cool if useless stuff, like an airport control tower and a 707 galley. Because it’s fun, I guess. The barrels of unidentified gray metal fragments (cheap!) turned out to be magnesium-thorium, a radioactive mixture. A couple years later the Air Force tracked it down and decontaminated the whole site. Meaning all his inventory went somewhere. Oh, and Social Services took his daughter away because he lived on site. Pretty much a nightmare.
You just call a scrapper in the area the car is in and either break even or make a small profit.
Gee, just set the reserve at $99 and say so.
When does the Autopian get a selling / trading / giving stuff away feature?
Here’s what I see. A person with a special interest vehicle had given up on an overwhelming project. Being a good steward, the seller chose to sell it at an extreme loss with the hopes that it would go to someone who truly wanted this (frankly) collection of spare parts for an interesting vehicle rather than sell it off for scrap.
Every day, the number of Scout parts becomes smaller. Kudos to the seller for saving this parts collection, rather than scrapping them.
Yes but the seller should not go into the hole for it
Maybe you’re right, and maybe there were better ways to accomplish that goal, if that was indeed the goal. On the other side, I think it’s rather noble to be willing to take a loss in order to save the parts for someone who truly wants them.
It’s a low transaction price for an online auction, but there really isn’t much of value here.
It’s not a very liquid market.
Not as bad as trying to buy or sell a door handle for a Vosin, but still.
Probably a specialist used parts or Beverly Hills Car Club type place, or a Scout message board would have been better.
I have a bunch of projects to get rid of in the next few weeks
A Thing, TR3, and a 63 220SE , maybe a 914/6 and a bunch of Fuch wheels if anyone is interested
I am not in a position to be asking this, but tell me more about the Thing.
Well the Munsters were developed by one studio who had the rights to the monsters. However the studio that developed the ADAMS Family just used a 1930s cartoon to develop the Adams Family. Cousin Itt was added later. Oops you asked about Thing. Don’t have that story
Those wheels are going to be listed where?
You can get a complete running, driving Scout II on BAT for $20k with the body made entirely of steel.
Even with that free frame, there’s no reason to spend twice that amount and three years bringing this to any sort of presentable.
Maybe he should have donated it to a vocational school.
Add the BAT Fees it’s $35,000
But it was $10. WHITE HOT DEAL.
Losing money on a sale fuck BAT
Finally… the price of clapped out, rusted heaps of relatively un-special old “project vehicles” (that are often better described as a collection of used parts) are coming back down to reality.
Seriously… when I look at this, I see 1 parts vehicle with some extra parts thrown in.
Now I will say that $10 for this collection of parts IS dirt cheap. I would have pegged the value of this rusted heap and the extra parts at around $500.
With a non-running engine and completely rusted body (and lets assume, frame, or else they wouldn’t have a spare), this thing doesn’t even qualify as a parts car unless you need the spare frame.
It is scrap metal, and that is ok.
Any decent chrome or other parts $2k
Apparently not.
I’m sure word of the auction made the rounds in Scout communities.
The valuable parts on this one must have been missing or in terrible shape.
What does it cost to ship stuff these days? Especially stuff that doesn’t move under its own power. For a reseller, you might be breaking even a couple years later when you’ve sold the last part, but that’s going to be a tough pill to swallow in the meantime.
We’ll be seeing this at MOAB soon. David still has contacts in Michigan with storage space.
“clean Michigan title” was all I needed to see to think the same thing
Does David still have contacts in Michigan willing to let him use that storage space?
Was the buyer’s name Tavid Dracy? So his wife didn’t find out?
“Elise (not your real name), I’m skipping the Quarter Pounder Meal with cheese today. You’ll be surprised why.”
Would she be surprised, though?
Even if Elise (NHRN) didn’t google DT, I’m sure her friends did. There are no detectives like the friends of a woman going out with a new guy. I know my wife’s friends checked me out when we started dating, and my wife’s done it for her friends. Like that SNL sketch about the teenage girl detectives.
That said I’m pretty sure Elise (NHRN) would not be surprised.
Most likely Elise NHRN was selling it and trying to avoid DT seeing it. DT would not sell a vial of Jeep rust for $10
I’ve given away vehicles and accumulations of parts nicer than this for free and was happy to see them go, so it’s quite possible.
Still, in the spirit of helping with cost recovery I’m prepared to offer the lucky buyer the entire $10 just for the 345 engine, as long as that includes shipping.
I gave away a project bike once for free. It was just too much trouble at the time and it needed more and more the deeper I dug. Finally decided I did not want to dig a giant hole for a bike that now was partially disassembled, and not special or even particularly desirable.
I only paid 50 bucks for it in the first place and hadn’t put any money into it yet. I was very happy to have it leave my garage.
I gave away an entire ’94 Winnebago Adventurer motorhome once. We had to move cross-country, and it wouldn’t start and had stumped me — and was now stumping the mechanic. But he was happy to take it on as a project; he’d wanted an RV for a while and it was otherwise a nice older rig, so it went to somebody who wanted to give it another shot at life. I’d already footed the bill to have it towed to the shop, so it was a heck of a deal for him. But sometimes it’s best to move on and let someone else have a go at a project.
I gave away my old Saturn SL2 and our family’s 2003 Chevy Venture when we were done with them. There were people we knew that were broke and needed the vehicles, and I didn’t want to deal with the hassles of idiots on Craiglist or Facebook. No idea what happened to the Saturn, but the Venture is still going. I have zero regrets.
Giving away is free the seller was paying to get rid of it
I have been following scout auctions on bring a trailer for years and years. I expect a shoot up in value once people start seeing new Scouts on the streets. I think that this price with the minimums and fees is about right for a trashed old scout even with the new frame.
I bet I could get all the parts to finish the project on eBay! I’d even take pictures and write articles for you guys!
Conspiracy theory: someone sold this to their buddy so that they can come in under the $500 limit for 24 Hours of Lemons
Nobody in Lemons would give half a crap if someone paid $1K for a Scout if it raced.
And yet they said no when I wanted to bring a Travelall. Blah, blah, blah, Rule 2.1 maximum factory curb weight of 4200 pounds, blah, blah, blah. Not that I’m still bitter about this or anything.
I didn’t mention weight since the claimed weight of the Scout was 3600 lbs so it’d be legal.
Oh, I know, but I wasn’t going to let that get in the way of an opportunity to rant about the profound injustice of Lemons HQ expecting me to follow one of the other rules.
With all that rust, it will DEFINITELY be under 4200 pounds.
LOL
In the future, won’t that eliminate practically every modern German luxury car? And I’m also a little disappointed because I think it would be a hoot to enter a Bentley Turbo R.
They’ve been known to grant waivers so maybe you’ll have better luck than I did.
“…let’s see, a Scout II is about 3,600 pounds…”
Not that Scout. I think it lost about 600 pounds on the Michigan fe2o3 + h2o diet.
The fuel economy goes up after every speed bump.
Wow, if the buyer didn’t really want it and isn’t local, it’s gonna cost them a lot more to get rid of it.
Should’ve just scrapped it.
I’m surprised the opening bid wasn’t higher than that, like at least $99 or $100 or something. Otherwise, it would’ve been the first no-reserve auction on BaT to not even sell LOL
The $250 minimum suxxx tho
In comes David claiming “it’s nearly mint!”
Rust free.
Rust, free.
Punctuation makes all the difference.
Ain’t this right up Andrew Collin’s alley? What happened to that guy? He was the Scout owner at Jalopy-peanuts right?
He’s now EIC of The Drive and likely too busy for such silliness.
Will the sale actually go through? I’m skeptical. The secret BaT (and C&B) don’t want you to know, is that lots of auctions don’t go through, despite being won by someone.
And the seller? They just get banned. That’s it. If the buyer backs out, they get banned and lose their buyers fee. So the “cost” of the seller to back out here, isn’t exactly a big deal.
The seller should be required to pay BaT the $250 buyers fee in that case.
Personally, I think the sellers credit card should be charged the same exact dollar value as the winning bid buyers fee, which then gets refunded upon successful completion of the sale. Keep it fair for buyers and sellers.
That works too