A Challenger Arrives: Hagerty Introduces Classifieds
Another day, another new online marketplace for collector cars. Yes, Hagerty has put their name into the hat of places where you can buy and sell classic cars. The question isn’t “do we need another place to over pay for nostalgic cars?” but “which way will this drive prices?”
Obviously, I am against the seller-friendly-buyer-pays-and-takes-all-the-risk auction format that has swept the interwebs starting with BringaTrailer in 2014 and continuing with Hemmings Auctions, and CarsandBids. If you want a fun read, check out BringaTrailer (now part of Hearst media corp)’s yelp page — it is filled with 168 brutal reviews for an average of 2.5 stars…but that’s the full story because they have 102 reviews that are NOT recommended (this is the way that yelp allows business owners to sweep some of their negative press under the rug and avoid a 1.5 star rating). Of course there are thousands of happy BringaTrailer buyers and sellers from the sheer scale of their auctions, but you can’t dismiss the fact that people routinely overpay for cars via their auction format.
But there is hope when it comes to what Hagerty is doing, because they have introduced a marketplace where you can list your car if you are a paying member of the Hagerty Drivers Club, and there are no fees for buyer or seller. This is very different from a buyer-pays-premium auction where higher prices mean higher fees, more profit, etc. And Hagerty offers a very competitively priced insurance product (yes, I use Hagerty, and NO they don’t pay me to say nice things about them) and they are way cheaper than State Farm, Geico, Allstate, or any of the big insurance players. Will their emphasis on value over nonsense translate into a marketplace that doesn’t drive prices up? We will see. Search their listings here.
A quick search through the Hagerty Classifieds netted this gem, a 1979 Porsche 928 for $4000. It doesn’t run, but it is cheap.
Or this 1979 Chrysler 300 offered for $6,500.
What do you guys think?
I am a fan of Hagerty for insurance and have a L300 Delica and 2nd Gen Hilux Surf through them. Over the last couple of years they have been acquiring/buying a lot of content, a podcast and events, but after a cursory look through their classified site not sure if they are giving this new channel enough resources. Kinda meh selection of vehicles at what seems like top of market prices but not the quality for the amount of money. Interesting to see if this takes off or slowly sinks ala Driving While Awesome’s auction page.