Online car auctions are a thrill, but relying on bids to get a vehicle to fall within a desirable price range is a bit of a gamble if you’re buying and more than a bit of a gamble if you’re selling. Typically, for those averse to risk, there’s the “reserve” route, but this Toyota Pickup seller whose vehicle went up for auction “no reserve” now seems to have regrets.
Firstly, what is a reserve? Think of it as the seller’s bottom dollar. If a car up for auction has a reserve of $20,000 and bidding only reaches $18,000, the car isn’t sold. The top bidder doesn’t take the car home, and the seller doesn’t leave with cash, but also doesn’t leave short on the cash they expected.
It makes a lot of sense to set a reserve when auctioning a car, but there are two caveats. Firstly, some internet auction sites don’t accept reserves on certain cars. It may be due to condition, due to it being a niche vehicle with wildly varying values, or due to being worth a fairly low dollar amount. Secondly, reserves need to be extremely realistic, meaning bidding must be expected to meet or exceed the reserve.
That brings us to this 1982 Toyota Pickup, which recently went up for auction on Bring a Trailer. It’s modified in a rather period-correct way with suitable aftermarket wheels, 31-inch all-terrain tires, a brush guard, and a 2.4-liter stroker engine; it presents as a nice driver.
A recent repaint after rust repairs has resulted in a great-looking body, but there’s some light patination on the trim and corner lights, a bit of wear on the interior, a void in the dashboard due to the absence of a factory radio, a broken window knob, and uninstalled air conditioning components.
Oh yeah, and the odometer of this Toyota Pickup shows 207,000 miles, but total mileage is unknown. Effectively, it looks like a 90-percent done project that needs a bit of finishing to send it over the top, and it’s in the sort of shape you’d expect to see in an owner’s group.
Now, values on these things vary wildly from four figures to as much as $50,000 depending on options and condition, so with the modifications made and existing odds-and-ends requiring tidying up, you could say a no reserve auction made sense.
In fact, the vast majority of Toyota Pickup examples from this era on Bring A Trailer were listed without a reserve, so there’s definitely precedent. Unfortunately, it seems that the owner didn’t quite know what they were getting into. When the auction closed with a high bid of $15,000, the seller took to the comment section, making their feelings known to the peanut gallery:
Not gonna lie that kinda hurts.
I paid $17k for it… put $12k into it….
When asked by another commenter about why the auction didn’t have a reserve, the seller responded with:
because BaT said they wouldn’t. I wanted to do a $17k reserve and BaT said no. So for this auction BaT would have paid me that extra $2k. Long story short, I will never be using nor advising use of BaT again. Big dang.
Ah, okay, a few things to note here. Firstly, we have no official confirmation for this claim that Bring A Trailer didn’t offer a reserve, but we’ve reached out to ask. Regardless of whether a reserve is offered or not, it’s still the seller’s choice to auction off a vehicle as opposed to listing it privately on a platform like Facebook Marketplace. Secondly, there seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding on what happens on Bring A Trailer if a vehicle listed with a reserve doesn’t meet it. Here’s what it says on Bring A Trailer’s frequently asked questions page:
For auctions that do not meet reserve, you and the high bidder will be given the opportunity to exchange offers above the highest bid and below the reserve amount. For more information, see the Reserve Not Met FAQ sections below.
Assuming Bring A Trailer accepted a $17,000 reserve on this Toyota Pickup, it wouldn’t eat the $2,000 difference, it would be up to the seller and the highest bidder to negotiate on the difference between the highest bid and the reserve. If negotiations don’t end up working out, the seller just keeps the car.
Beyond this misconception on how reserves work, there’s some more we need to unpack here. We’ve reached out to Bring A Trailer for comment and will report back as soon as we hear more, but in the meantime, it’s worth reiterating that values on these third-generation Toyota pickup trucks can vary wildly. For instance, here’s the high end of the spectrum, a seriously nice 1982 SR5 4×4 model with period correct mods that sold for $44,444 on Bring A Trailer last month. From the gleaming chrome to the pristine interior, it looks money, so it’s no surprise it brought in a serious sum.
And here’s something on the lower end, a slightly patinated 1983 SR5 4×4 model that sold on Bring A Trailer last year for $9,500. With an odometer showing 88,000 miles, it looks like a pretty solid driver example. Sure, the dashboard is cracked and the paint is flaking in places, but this thing has dealer service receipts dated as recent as 2014, a sign that someone took pretty good care of it.
Taking a look at the truck at the center of this debacle, it seems maybe a bit closer to the latter example than the former. While it does have some nice modifications, it’s also someone else’s project, it needs a bit of tidying, there’s some slight corrosion on some underbody surfaces like the floor of the bed, and the mileage situation seems like it’ll really affect resale value.
Given the current market uncertainty, $15,000 seems to me like a fair price, and it could be argued that’s this truck’s value because that’s what someone was actually willing to pay for it, but at the same time, I totally feel for the seller. Anytime you put lots of time and money into a vehicle, you want to be able to get some of that back when you sell — so naturally, it’s disappointing when that doesn’t happen. I’ve been there.
So, if you’ve been thinking about submitting your car for online auction, make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into. There’s a chance it might pull more money online than locally, but there’s also a chance your expectations might not be met.
Top graphic credit: Bring A Trailer
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Not all cars are worth what owners think. If the seller wanted at least $17K they should not have gone with a no reserve listing. BaT is not the only game in town. As mentioned there is Facebook Marketplace, plus; Cars & Bids, Hemmings, and of course Craig’s List just to mention the big guys. Lesson learned.
Misinterpreting the value of his truck, misinterpreting the auction rules and looking for someone to blame when his unrealistic expectations aren’t met instead of adjusting his expectations to fit within reality is all perfectly in alignment with the direction the country is going these days. That’s the new American way.
Personal accountability does seem to be in short supply lately.
Don’t forget the seller then crying about the whole thing on social media, looking for sympathy. The only thing missing is a Go Fund Me to make up the supposed lost money.
Hard to feel bad for this guy. If you’re modding to sell, you’re gonna have a bad time. If you’re not happy with the terms of the auction site, you’re likely gonna be unhappy with the result. And when you completely misunderstand how reserves work, you really have mismanaged expectations.
I would have expected this to go for $10-12k, so the $15k isn’t bad. If he wanted a reserve of $17k, he didn’t really take as much of a bath on it as he’s making it sound. He almost got as much as he wanted.
I thought the same way. If the seller wanted 17k reserve, 15k ain’t bad at all
Nope, this happens more often than you think. The seller will just back out of the sale and BaT will ban them. Nothing more.
But if a buyer backs out, BaT will ban them and then give the credit card hold money to the seller, so you’re lose that.
It’s an uneven system that penalizes buyers that back out more than sellers. And sellers backing out of deals is more common than you think but BaT and CaB work hard to keep it hush hush.
Unless they physically take possession of the cars and paperwork before the auction starts, it’s difficult to force sellers to complete a transaction if they don’t want to.
I’m not suggesting they force the seller to complete the transaction–though I’m not against that either. I’m simply suggesting the seller should lose money if they back out, and the buyer should get it. It’d be equal.
They need the sellers more than the buyers.
Not that they don’t need both, but there are several bidders on decent auction and only a single seller.
It’s the car supply that keeps people checking the site and (hopefully) bidding. A single widespread “[Auction site] stole my car and transferred it to fake auction ‘winner'” post could dry up the car supply and kind of doom the site.
That would be biting the hand that feeds the auctions though. The auction sites rely on sellers bringing their cars to the auction, so they’re highly incentivized to have attractive selling terms in order to keep their supply stream.
Or just allow reserves on all cars
They lose the hold money
I think the system they have is very fair. BaT is a business and has a standard to hold for their platform. The goal is to offer an experience that both buyer and seller can trust, if one of the two involved in the transaction fails to go through with a deal then there is no reason why they shouldn’t be banned. It’s a legal contact when you list a car or win a car at an auction.
I’m not against them getting banned. I just think it’s silly that if the buyer backs out, they give up (lose) money and get banned. If the seller backs out, they just get banned.
Why is the buyer out money, but not the seller, if they back out?
The seller is out $99 listing fee, unless they paid more for photography or the premium services BaT provides, but I would guess that type of seller has a good car and isn’t someone just trying to make an unreasonable amount of money doing a quick flip. Still, your point is valid – the penalty for backing out on a deal is worse for buyers than sellers. I think the only way BaT could fix that is with some sort of legal contract but that gets really cumbersome quickly.
BaT is simply providing a platform to help sellers get their cars into a buyer’s hands. The penalty for banning a seller is relatively toothless unless you are a dealer trying to sell cars for a living. A dude who sells 1 car every couple years couldn’t care less about a ban.
I disagree with the argument that they are out the listing fee. They got their moneys worth out of that. They paid $99 to have their vehicle listed, and it got listed.
I learned long ago the more hands in the pot the less you make, unless it is something you can’t do or it is something the other party does very well,
We list your truck, that will cost you
We do the paperwork, that will cost u
We take pictures, that will cost you
You bail, yeah that will cost you
Because the seller doesn’t pay money into the system. There’s a small listing fee that I’m sure is forfeit, but I don’t see any real way to penalize sellers financially unless you start trying to get the law involved and nobody wants to deal with that kind of hassle. It’s just the nature of an auction, really.
It’d be easy. At the end of the auction a 5% hold is placed on the sellers credit card, and remains there until the transaction is complete. If the seller backs out, that fee gets transferred to the buyer.
It’s not rocket science.
I’d wager BaT and CaB don’t do this, because they don’t want to scare away sellers.
Oh, that’s probably 100% why they don’t. Yes, I’ve seen many sellers back out. At least BaT updates the listing to shame them. I’ve also seen buyers back out too. Strange cause they’re out the most money.
Yes but then the BAT guy gets arrested and jailed for theft. You can’t just decide to do something illegal and put it in a contract because it is still illegal. It’s like the scam of gas stations putting a hold on a card for more money than you spent.
Contract law they made the offer and didn’t follow through can also be false advertising etc
My brother “bought” a car on C&B and the seller backed out because they wanted more.
If you don’t mind, what car was it? I sometimes see cars sold waaayyy below value and I always wonder if it went through.
It was a Focus ST. The price was decent but not an outrageous steal or anything. The seller had a new ad on Facebook Marketplace for $4k more than the final bid as soon as the auction closed.
I think the common understanding of an auction causes buyers to think that they will definitely get the vehicle if they have the high bid and meet the reserve. I don’t know how up front BaT and C&B are about the fact that they can’t force the sellers hand it over and that no laws were broken if the seller didn’t take the money.
Exactly BAT and both parties need to stay within the law.
Has this person ever used ebay, like ever? Auctions should be pretty straight forward in how they work if you have ever bought or sold something used on that site.
They really thought their half-baked project car would be worth more, not less, than they obtained it for.
May this be a lesson to all the homeowners out there
You mean like 20 pages of user agreement legalese to buffalo the user?
I bought my MGB from BaT. It sold for less than I think it should have, so did other commenters. I met the owner in person since we lived with in the same town. He was pretty unhappy with the low price of the non reserve sale. He was thinking about not selling it, but needed the money. I had spent like 3 years watching prices, and jumped in with the last bid. I wouldn’t have bid on it, if I had to have it shipped, or a long tow. Since it was so close, I thought what the heck.
Never let someone else’ seller’s remorse get in the way of obtaining a good deal.
Spoken like a true Ferengi.
Ah yes, the lesser-known “MGB” rule of acquisition!
If he put $12k into it and was planning to sell it, he should have spent that making it look like the pickup from Back to the Future.
Alternately, spend the money on a model with more predictable auction results, like a Land Cruiser or old FJ.
I don’t know what this truck looked like when he bought it, but $17k for an old Toyota pickup that needs $12k in work to get to this condition seems very high. Maybe this car flipping thing is not for this guy.
Was just typing roughly the same thing.
Maybe I’m out of the loop on the vintage minitruck scene but if that truck was worth $17k when this dude bought it, it should’ve been so pristine that any mods would just lower its value.
I don’t know what his dealio is, but there sure are a lot of folks out there making up grievances these days.
Well except that’s not the correct generation of truck to be a BTTF clone and that in itself would probably lower the value.
I know, but I’d still be more interested in this truck with a rollbar full of retro chrome-housing off road lighting.
The auction results say that the ‘landscaper spec plus wheels’ look does not bring the bidders.
I enjoy the look of this truck and would love thrashing it offroad. But that’s the same problem you’re describing – I’d only buy it for “planning to thrash it offroad” money, where this seller wants to get “garage queen collector item” money.
Well wheel and design by Chip Goose, mo money. Wheels and design by Chuck Jones, less money.
29k into it, desired 17k reserve, actual sale price 15k.
Seller was going to take a bath on this whether it hit the reserve price or not. If it’s really such a big deal to lose 14k instead of 12k then you shouldn’t have auctioned it.
And a lifelong lesson in how auctions work: priceless
Except we learned it for free, or the monthly price of membership to Autopian.
He probably hoped it would bring more than the minimum he would be accepting.
In the words of 1992 Teen Talk Barbie: “math class is tough!”
Nelson Haha
Actually hah hah,
Cars and Bids tried to talk me out of having a reserve when I sold my abuelo’s truck. I just couldn’t bring myself to drop the reserve, but the sale went great. I feel like no reserve just gets the tire kickers bidding at the beginning.
Caveat emptor also applies to choosing a venue to sell a vehicle on.
I have heard that BaT encourages sellers to avoid reserves because it increases engagement, but ultimately it’s on the seller to decide if they want to take that risk or not.
I’ve sold a car on Cars and Bids and had to accept that risk. I ultimately decided that I’d be willing to take a bit less on my car if the trade-off was not having to deal with a bunch of tire kickers who aren’t actually interested and that the car goes into the hands of someone who cares for it. My car’s hammer price was ultimately in the ballpark I expected but lower than I had hoped.
These places encourage no reserve because that means they get their fees because a sale is going to happen. They’ll show you slightly dishonest stats that purportedly show why no-reserve is better for sellers, but it’s all done to secure more money for the website, not for the sellers.
Shocking revelation that a business would adopt a strategy that maximizes profits for said business.
It’s like when you finally realize that HR is there to protect the company, not the employees.
Pretty much. It’s not BaT’s job to ensure that you turn a profit from the sale of your vehicle. Their job is to sell the vehicle, and if it sells, you have nothing to complain about because they did the job you paid them to do. The fact you overpaid for it to start with and spent way too much on mods is not their problem.
Man there are so many gifs for rhis
I totally get that. Just saying at the end of the day if the seller doesn’t like the terms that the auction site presents them, nobody is holding a gun to their head and forcing them to accept. BaT isn’t the only game in town.
But 20 pages of terms with agent lying to the customer? Let’s be honest these bid sites are just buy here pay here car lots that take the money and don’t even own the cars. Mo money less risk scumbags.
I’ve always wondered why people think they can get top dollar for anything that they are selling that the buyer can’t see, feel, test, and taste. Bigger the risk the lower the bid.
On what planet did this guy expect to get at least $27k for a 43 year old Toyota truck with unknown mileage and a bunch of work needed?
I totally see why BaT refused a Reserve: they knew it wouldn’t get that much, and there’s no incentive for them to take the effort to list and sell something they know they won’t get paid for. Creating and running the auction isn’t free, so there needs to be a business case there.
Doug Demuro has mentioned the same thing on Cars on Bids. They don’t always allow a reserve if they have a reasonably good idea that the bids won’t ever make it there. That said, Doug has mentioned selling at No Reserve can sometimes get bidding wars going as buyers know that the winning bid WILL get the car, and that amps up the enthusiasm.
What I don’t get is why the guy went ahead anyway. Don’t like the terms? Sell it yourself or on some other site.
Exactly. Demuro has also said that pretty much every case of a reserve vs no-reserve auction, you are going to get a better result with no-reserve. The issue is if something unplanned happens during the auction (like tariffs for instance, or other economic disruptions). His argument is that selling at no-reserve shows you have confidence in your car.
This is, of course, coming from someone who has only a fractional interest up to a certain sale price in the transaction.
It is also the case that someone who has something desirable in the right condition will list at no reserve because they know it will sell at an appropriate price. Of course there is more bidding and discussion on those vehicles.
It makes no sense to risk selling anything less than close to value. It takes 2 bidders willing to pay the value not one. And most of these bidders are flippers.
Wrong
If you read it they were looking for $17k.
Yeah, but the guy was saying how much he has into it. I feel like he should have been able to get a truck like this in need of $12k worth of work for $5k or less.
Unless you’re a brand-name restoration specialist, the owner is not going to be able to pass-on full retail cost to the next buyer.
At this point there are very few. I’m not really shopping, but I know of Icon or Singer as restoration shops that I would pay a premium for. They have established a brand that may carry more cache than some manufacturers at this stage in some vehicles’ lives.
… and since it only got up to $17k, BaT was justified in rejecting the reserve otherwise it wouldn’t have sold at all. Like I said, auctioneers are usually pretty good at estimating this stuff, so if they said a $17k reserve wouldn’t sell, it’s reasonable enough for them to reject the owner’s reserve ask. If they don’t think a car will sell, there’s no incentive for them to list it.
Now why the owner went ahead and listed it anyway is beyond me. If I were in their shoes, I’d have taken that as a sign I wasn’t likely to get what I’d hoped for, so I should hang onto the truck and finish it up a bit nicer.
Bring A Trailer doesn’t force you to sell with no reserve (source, have sold on BaT)
They might advise that no reserve will make the auction seem more attractive to potential bidders, but they won’t outright deny putting up a reserve. Shit sucks sometimes, occasionally being a risk-taker won’t pay off
I wasn’t too thrilled that poor timing (auction ended soon after the original recipricol tariffs were first announced) caused my car to sell for a couple hundred short of the reserve I originally planned to set, but things could be worse!!
You mean they will lie? This is trusting the sleaziest buy here pay here dealership
FAFO. Sounds like someone didn’t do their homework. While I’ve never sold anything on BaT, I’ve sold plenty pf things on eBay in the past. If I thought it needed a reserve, I put one on it, even though eBay charges a bit more for that. For stuff I didn’t feel warranted a reserve, I knew that I was going to get whatever I got for it, end of story.
Honestly, I don’t really feel sympathy for someone who puts something up for auction with no reserve. Even if Bring A Trailer didn’t allow for a reserve in this case, so what? Just don’t use their site.
You need to look out for yourself in this life and be willing to change your mind and your plans when new information becomes available.
Victim mentality at work with this seller.
Reality bites poorly informed speculator, not shocked.
It’s amazing how many people don’t realize when you open your mouth to “explain” things, you also have the opportunity to incriminate yourself.
That feels like what is happening here.
So many reviews are the person absolutely bashing whatever they are reviewing, when really they are just telling you how clueless they are.
Another thought here. If they guy is dead set on giving BaT the finger, he can just renege on the deal. BaT will ban him and it’s bad karma but there’s nothing they can do about it. I wouldn’t do that but hey, worse things have happened in the world.
I was thinking the same thing. I’ve seen it with other non reserve auctions. The seller just says I’m not selling it. They lose their payment, and get banned. But they don’t HAVE to sell it if they think they’re losing thousands of $$$
It’s a shitty thing to do for sure, but if you weigh losing thousands (or tens of thousands) versus getting banned on one auction site, I can see the appeal of being an asshole.
The seller doesn’t lose any money if they refuse to sell it after the fact. The buyer will, because when you place a bid a hold is placed on your credit card, and you’ll lose that if you back out. But a similar thing does not exist for sellers.
nope, seller is charged a $99.00 fee to place the sale
If the sale doesn’t go through or you bid doesn’t win, you’re refunded the 5% fee as a bidder/buyer
Seller pays $99 no matter what
That’s not the same thing. It’s a listing fee, not a financial incentive to follow through with the sale at the end of the auction.
Bidders/buyers risk a 5% fee if they back out, and that fee gets transferred to the seller if the buyer does back out.
A fair set up would result in a seller having a 5% fee being placed on their credit card at end of sale, that gets held until the transaction is complete. If they back out, they’d lose it to the buyer.
It would absolutely disincentivize backing out of transactions on the sellers part, but it would also massively disincentivize people from ever selling on that platform, given if I’m trying to sell a car to get money back into my account, I would pretty much never sign up for an auction that would hold me back from the money I already do have available. The reality is that any auction that would try something like this would hemorrhage sellers like crazy, because while that might work in a vacuum, the landscape of online auction sites is quickly being flooded between BaT, C&B, Barret Jackson, Mecum, Hagerty, and numerous other specialty sites.
Good god the number of times even sellers don’t understand what a reserve/no reserve auction means is scary. I get newbies to the platform that are buyers, but sellers should read all the information BaT gives them.
Speaking with experience – I’ve sold two cars and bought two cars on BaT in the last year.
BaT will often reject cars if the seller wants a high reserve price because they want the car to sell not go RNM. They will either request the seller does a no-reserve auction or use a lower reserve price. There is no situation in which a seller is forced to accept any of this – they can can just move on to a different site. Cars and Bids is an alternate option, but its the same situation.
BaT won’t make up a $2k difference in reserve price vs sale price. They say they might make up a small difference per their discretion, but I am guessing that’s only on very high-dollar auctions where they are making the maximum fees. On a $15000 auction, bring a trailer fees are $750 (5% of sale price) plus the $99 listing fee the seller pays. They won’t take a loss for the benefit of some schmo selling an old toyota.
This is exactly correct. If the reserve was actually 15k, and the highest bid was 14.5k, then the car would have sold, BaT would have paid the seller the remaining $500, and pocketed the last $250, but they will only ever pay out the difference between high bid and reserve if that number is LESS than the sales commission the site charges, because they’d rather make 2% on a car than 0%, but they won’t take a loss, especially with their listing fee.
If you dump $12K into a truck and that doesn’t include finishing the actual components like the AC, you are just reaping what you sow.
Nobody trusts modifications were done right if you didn’t fix actual problems first.
So an unfinished project car that he supposedly paid 17,000 for and then put in 12,000 – that is all a box of lies. Was he expecting north of 30k? It’s a cramped, low spec, 4-cyl, slow as the day is long with no A/C and a dash toupee. You get premium money for something that’s complete, not the car with A/C that “just needs a charge”. Just needs a charge = $3000 complete system rebuild and conversion. And the engine compartment looks like Pepboys exploded under the hood.
“Just needs a charge = $3000 complete system rebuild and conversion.”
Maybe. Or maybe it really does “just need a charge”. It’d be a good idea to replace the seals too. Its my understanding those failing are the most common reasons for an A/C system to lose its charge. Seals are cheap and easy to replace.
If it does need a complete system retrofit I’m pretty sure it can be done for a LOT less than 3k. When the A/C in my ’06 Accord failed I found the entire system could be had for about $350 so the whole job could have been done for about $400 in parts with DIY labor and AutoZone borrowed tools.
I was lucky though. My A/C really did ” just need a charge” so I fixed mine for about $25 in freon and Schrader valves (which are trivial to replace).
Good luck with that. When a compressor self destructs it throws particles all over the system and it’s a good idea to replace everything so it doesn’t happen again. But my point is, if it just needs a minor, inexpensive repair he would have done it already. So he lying.
In this case the ad states A/C components were removed and are included in the sale so its not advertised as “just needing a charge”. An examination action of the components would determine if the compressor did indeed blow up or the system is fine but was simply not reinstalled with the new engine.
In cases where the seller DOES claim the system “just needs a charge” it’s a matter of first examining the compressor. If it blew it’s likely to be covered in compressor oil. If the system had any UV dye put in it’ll look like a crime scene. If it looks OK the next step is to bypass the pressure switch and listen to the compressor operate for a few moments. If the clutch kicks on and the compressor sounds OK it might indeed be OK. If not then yeah, the seller is lying.
Okay, fair. Maybe you’ll pass it on for 20, maybe you’ll only get 15,500. But you won’t take a huge bath.
Great! Now we’re in the 10 to 13 range.
[above is not a statement on the actual value of this truck in particular]
When are people going to realize that unless you’re Singer or Icon, no one wants to pay for your mods/restomods?
See this all the time with muscle cars. You did not increase the value of your car by $50k because you put $50k into it. Modifications are probably the worst financial decision you can make, and 99% of the time you’re better off just taking them off and selling them separately.
This is what I have told my fiance if I ever were to get rid of my firebird (which I just don’t see why I ever would) it is worth much more in parts then a complete car. A T56 magnum, Ford 9in and a 406 small block are worth much more sold individually then someone would want to pay for a running turd gen.
Plus, you’d have to change your username, and… it’s just easier not to sell the car, y’know?
Yeah I actually need more Firebirds not less haha.
LOL! Impeccable logic!
I paid 7k and have put I would say over 15k into my firebird so that means it is obviously worth 25k haha
We used to take cars in on trade (used mega-dealer, 300-400 cars) and the guy with a 3yo Civic and $10k in mods didn’t understand how we were offering him $7,500 for the whole thing.
Because you can’t sell it to the general public like that. And it costs money to put things back to stock to make it retail sellable.
All my mods, I kept the OE parts, then sold the mods when I was done with them — the fun part, things like shortshifters and electronic bits retained 80%+ of their value, especially if they had become scarce. It was actually a lot better value than the car itself, but you need those OE parts to ALSO bring the car’s value back to what it should be. That’s a win-win.
BaT does offer a service where, in certain cases, if a car fails to meet reserve by a small amount they’ll let mark it as sold and send you a check for the difference. This guy seems very confused about how that works, though, because that’s usually a thing they do for higher-end cars. Having used the platform myself as a seller, and having sold at no reserve, BaT is extremely clear about the expectations put on you as a seller so you really have no excuse. If you don’t want to go no reserve you don’t have to use the platform. Nobody’s forcing you.
Bat as well as Cars and Bids will do this if the difference between high bid and reserve is less than the auction fee. Theoretically, lets say the reserve was 2k over the high bid, but the auction fee would have been 2500, in this case, the auction site will send the 2k difference and pocket the remaining $500, because that’s still greater than $0 should the transaction not happen. If this does happen, the listing will always says sold at $XXX Highest bid price, and the money movement happens in the backend, if an Auction says Reserve not met, then it’s between buyer and seller to work out a deal, but it is a guarantee that the reserve price was at least 5% (most auction fees are ~4.5%) higher than the highest bid.
That is one of the bad points about BaT- they oftentimes don’t allow you to have a reserve. It sucks. I lost a lot of money on a Chrysler SnoRunner that I completely restored, but they wouldn’t let me have a reserve on it. Kind of put a bitter taste in my mouth with them.
It’s too bad they’re the only auction site on the internet.
So why did you use them? If they don’t offer terms you’re ok with, why did you continue?
I don’t mean that flippantly, I’m curious if that was all upfront, or if BaT pulled some kind of bait and switch.
Clearly this seller thought he was using Bring A Trailer (2015) and not Bring A Trailer (2025).
The good news about ’80 Toyota pickups is that they’re often parked near some sort of time machine. Or warlord. Maybe both.
Yeah but you need the time machine that’s already been to the future and had the Mr Fusion installed, otherwise getting that 1.21 Jiggawatts is going to be tough.
Gigawatts my friend. Precise terminology is a must in the time machine business.