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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This is hilarious.
The truck is OK but its, like, an old truck with some mods.
Crappy tacked together exhaust.
Random spots under the car that have been recently sprayed black.
“Recent bodywork and repaint” is never confidence-inspiring without photos of the work, which I’m not seeing on the post.
I bet one reason these are bringing some coin is most of them have just rusted away and so the desert examples are what is left.
And the mileage is really up there!
Based on the headline I was thinking it was going to have sold for $2500 or something.
But $15,000?! Sure, there’s some examples bringing a lot more money.
$15,000 is A LOT OF MONEY and it’s very close to what seller was going to put the reserve at so … BFD, I guess?
Also, I’d love some examples of no reserve auctions that came in at actual surprising prices, that would be fun to read about!
“ Long story short, I will never be using nor advising use of BaT again. Big dang”
This is not BaT’s fault.
The seller overpaid when they bought it AND for the work done. Not sure what else could be expected here.
I similarly bought an ’88 Fiero GT 5-spd T-Top this way on BaT. Here’s the story!
https://youtu.be/KQFQvGeOuhM?si=WdFGhyXOpBlZYaQ1
I sent the car to my uncle for him to drive it and care for it since I had no room for it. 2 years later, I found a buyer who paid market value for the car, netting me a few grand in the process. I’m still in touch with its owner. When he picked it up from me, he gifted me a mug with my comment on the BaT sale after I’d bought the car 🙂
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1988-pontiac-fiero-gt-15/
Auctions without a reserve are ultimately a gamble, and lately BaT and C&B have been coming up short as prices are settling back down after the Covid-era high. Of course it’s in the auctions’ best interest to push no reserve auctions as much as possible, because then they always have a sale (and make the percentage on the sale price) versus a no reserve where they make no money beyond the listing fee.
Is the 12k he put into it in the room with us?
Assuming he didn’t do any work, paint + stroker motor and other stuff doesn’t seem that far off.
I love my Toyota’s but paying 17 grand for that in that shape is laughable. Good on that first seller for getting that price in the first place loll
When I sold my XJ on BAT they were very clear about why the auction would be no reserve and how it would work. In my case the issue was high mileage. I was kind of nervous going in but felt I got a very fair price especially after having the Jeep sit on Craigslist for weeks with very little serious interest. I’m in California and the XJ sold to a guy in the mid-west. I would do it again without hesitation.
It’s a hobby, not an investment.
If you get to enjoy a cool vehicle for a while and you make back some of what you spent when you sell, that seems like a win.
I think the seller might have seen other auctions where similar vehicles closed at higher values and doesn’t understand why this truck didn’t achieve those values. We’ve all spent too much money on a car that was worth half of what we had in it, ideally, you do that when you’re young and you’re only out $2-3,000. This truck wasn’t photographed well, wasn’t particularly clean and was clearly a project. If you’re going to get into a restoration project, either FINISH it, or don’t even start.
If you’re going to try and flip a vehicle, you’ve got to do the work yourself. You’ll never make any money if you’re paying a shop to fix it up for you.
Where the heck did he dump the money into this truck?
This truck brought extremely close to ACTUAL market value, if not a little bit more. It truly is an instance of the seller not realizing what they are doing, and then feeling crappy about their loss. I feel kinda bad for him too, but it’s a LOT HARDER to make money on cars than people realize. It’s VERY easy to lose lots of money quickly.
Yeah you generally only make money extremely cheap or extremely expensive cars. There’s a giant middle class that it doesn’t matter how nice it is, it’s only worth what it’s worth, not what you have in it.
I just ate about 6k on a Benz wagon. I was just glad to see it go to someone who can keep it on the road and drive it.
Important detail: the truck is in Kansas. So $15k is a good bit more than $15k for most buyers after shipping…
There’s no story here. You gambled, you lost. Better luck next time.
First of all, everyone knows that mods don’t automatically increase the value of a car. Can they? Possibly, but there’s no guarantee. Secondly, a car is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. He’s unhappy that he got $15,000 but honestly i wouldn’t pay $12,000. There might be a guy in the world, that had that same truck back in the day, that gets sentimental seeing it and would pay $25,000 for it. A big part of it is timing too.
Its possible that the true value is actually $15,000 and that’s all he is gonna get no matter where he lists it. What you bought it for and how much you spent mean nothing.
But wait, “I know what I got” doesn’t counteract market forces?
The seller did, in fact NOT “know what they got”. But then again that is probably often the case.