Well after selling dads JFO last year and my Mk2 Cooper 3 years ago...and vowing never to own another i'm finding my mind wondering what's about.
Must admit i've stayed away from the scene almost entirely since March last year, so what are we looking at on prices for useable (ie not concours) Mk1 & MK2 Coopers or very decent replicas???
In 2003, I picked up a 66 Morris Cooper with NO RUST and fresh paint. Subtle mods. £1500. (I drove it legally home as well) No decimal point error, or missing K or 0's
The market has gone so silly, I wouldn't entertain the thought of another mini.
For the price of a project version of the above, you could get something like a Sylva Striker with MOT.
I'm really sorry to say it, but I'm with In the shed on this.
I simply cannot imagine ever buying another Mini, while they are still great little cars, the price of them has gone absolutely stupid as far as I am concerned.
A decent Cooper S costs more money than I paid for my brand new Scirrocco, and for that matter more than I paid for my first house, it is simply stupid.
I know things go up in price & it's simply supply and demand, but there comes a time when I can simply not reconcile the high price with my desire to buy. Sadly Mini's have as far as I am concerned passed this threshold.
Have to say i'd had a look through e-bay last night and Mk2's like my old one (which we sold at £4k 3 years ago) seem to be £6k ish now...
The only way i'd consider another 998 would be a MK1 (for the trim and shiny bits ), find the engines so slow, hence the question on replicas maybe..or something motorsporty inclined but Mk1 or 2...
The old barometer I had used of Mk1 & 2 Escorts seem to have dropped in price strangely
i agree with mini prices shooting through the proverbial roof
yet i still see the same mini's appearing on the bay for ridiculous prices, a certain very nice early van springs to mind, it is not original, but is tastefully done, last time i saw it the seller is still asking 12k for it.
It is a nice van but not worth that.
knowing my luck the seller will be a board member apologies in advance, just my opinion lol
Regards Nick
edit it appears to now be sold, where did i put that humble pie about
I agree that the prices of early mini's have gone up, but I can't see why people are complaining about it. I mean, if you had a nice one you bought ages ago for a low ( at the time price ) and were to sell it now, you wouldn't sell it for the same price you paid then, would you? You would want what they sell for these days. So though you wouldn't want pay the going prcie for a early mini you certainly wouldn't sell your's for under the market value. I am in the market for a early mk1 now, but for me it has to be something I really want and really like, but I am not maoning about the current prices of them you just have to pay the going rate.
The thing is : how do any of us really know how much cars are fetching anyway, I certainly wouldn't use Ebay as a reference point !! As has been said those prices are often the extreme and unconfirmed. I have recently picked up a few lovely cars NOT from Ebay for very reasonable money ! I even offered one of 'em on here recently still for very reasonable money and barely got a sniff so the idea that Minis are all overpriced I personally do not buy. (pardon the pun ! ).
I've even picked up some cheap stuff off Ebay so despite my initial comment to Bryn I wouldn't paint a picture as gloomy as has been painted on this thread. If someone wants to pick up a decent early Mini for reasonable money they definately still can it's just not as easy as it once was as supply nowadays is outstripped by demand. Yes Mk1 S's (ironically the least genuine of virtually any Mini variant nowadays) are silly money now mainly because they are being bought by investors but there's so much stuff out there still for reasonable money like Mk1 850's, early GT's, Mk3 S's and Mk2 Coopers and early Wolseley Hornets/Riley Elfs are ten a penny !
There are a few bargains still left on the bay....i won a nice remote plus chrome gear stick and an original gear knob - on its own worth £60 all for £20 last night!
I agree though that the price for Mk1's in general has gone silly. So much so that normal enthusiasts often cant afford the initial purchase price, never mind the 5K + needed to restore a Mk1 shell. I know that my 'S' was very bad but when i looked at what i had got then added all the bits i needed together, it would have cost me upwards of 15K to get it somewhere near and even then there would not have been alot of original 1964 car left. Even though i love minis and mk1's in general and would have loved to have a restored Surf Blue 1071, I cant afford or justify that amount of money on a car that spends most of its time in the garage......real life stops me!
Please don't misinterpret the comments I made earlier in this thread. I was speaking from a personal standpoint & to a great extent this is effected by the fact that I already have 3 cracking early Minis. Each representing my specific areas of collecting interest. If I was to find another Mini that was as appealing to buy as any of the ones I have now I would not be able to afford them.
There are as Pete says still some good cars at "reasonable" prices to be had, but you have to hunt & be prepared to hunt for a long time to find one.
I remember about 6 years ago, there being a farm auction and there was a "B" reg 1071S up for grabs. It was solid, but horrible metallic blue and had several wrong bits, including 940 head, wheels, seats, etc. Other than that was perfectly fine. Solid, useable example.
I had £3k for it (which is what it was worth to me as a buyer) and it went for about £3.3k. (One of you may have it...East Cornwall ish) I was again using my Island Blue/OEW 66 as a "If that's £1500, then that's no more than £3k" logic.
This business of Mk1's in half decent order pushing £8k coopers at £12 and S's being so much of a big number, I forget.
We have to take a big big big pinch of salt and stop right there for a second. My chum in Torquay has been (and not the very good mini shop in Newton Abbot) naughty with a number of bits and some V5s, as have a lot of people. There is a lot of crap floating around out there dressed up as original.....I suppose it comes down to how much pleasure the buyer gets, but IMO, a lot of it is false.
I saw a 120mph speedo go for £700 a while ago. I bought a 1430 engine with race everything for that.....as Vizard said "You've got to be very wary of old engines, they could be farooked". Again, it was a sensible price for the bits. Is the LSD broken, does the weber need a rebuild, regrind, rebore, new cam, etc, etc, etc.
It has gone silly.
Sadly for me, I rememer going to the scrapyard and thinking, "That 1275 engine only has 33 inlets, I won't bother buying it" what a fool. They were just sat in puddles waiting to go in the engines container.
A few years ago, my chum picked up a 1960 (Jan) Mini Deluxe which had been a racing car from about 63 to about 78 when it had been put in the back of a repair garage and used as a storage facility. It was like new but had horrible paint but no rust, there was also another 64 car without the shell included. £500 for all of it.
Clearly, we have inflation to consider and the fact that a lot of classic have died since, but they have gone up above and beyond this. This is great for people who bought them as investments, but not great for enthusiasts.
I hated minis, I was a Morris Minor man myself, I had Vizards book and ended up with a 55 Split Screen which would do wheelspins in 3rd in the dry.....courtesy of 1/3/4" carbS and a 649 cam.....that went into an utterly insane A35....anyway, I digress. My GF at the time insisted on buying a mini. This was about 12 years ago... £400 for a CityE with a 998 and no rust. I had to borrow it as my whateveritwas had "issues". That was it, I was converted, after a couple of days of driving like a tool, I went and bought a 64 SDL for £800. Ended up putting an MG Metro engine in it and having fun.....Anyway, come MOT time, there was a 5p sized bit of welding which needed doing at the front of the sill....cue getting out the angle grinder.....then finding the car was made of corn flakes packets, newspaper and filler.....
I sold the stripped shell with ID to someone for over £800 IIRC (YCV103B where are you now?) and the rest of it went all over the world and for a scrapper, I made £1000 clear on it. This was probably 2003 and around the start of the silliness.
I then made the decision to buy one with no rust, hence the one which is now in the shed.
I think there was a transition from Freeads papers and the back of newspapers, mini magazine, etc to eBay and it drove the prices up. It's not so much of a "I'll wait until one comes up in freeads for £200" they are all on ebay, everyone wants one and now they are £3k.
Ebay has spoiled the bargain forever.
I remember getting 20 reverse rims for £50 in freeads!
I don't think its just ebay that has caused the massive inflation we have seen in recent years.
I personally believe that it is to some extent due to the demographic of Mini owners. With some obvious exceptions of course (Tim I take my hat off to you). The average MK1 mini owner is between 30 & 60 has probably been in full time employment for most of that time, could quite easily have paid their mortgage off & for the first time in their life have a bit of disposable income to spend.
In this situation what is the most normal thing to do? You got it, re live your childhood. It is only to be expected that prices will get very high for desirable items when it is this sort of person who is looking for a MK1 today. This has of course been aggravated by ebay & the I have money in my hand & must buy now culture that is so prevalent nowadays.
I also feel that in the next 20 or so years the price for rough to normal cars will begin to fall with only the very best examples holding their value in the long run. Lets face it, there are going to be very few people growing up today who attach the emotional significance / value to these cars that we do.
Look at the MG market & most other practical classics of the past. The price goes up staedily for years, it spikes & then falls dramatically. Remember when Minors were the classic car of choice? You can pick really good ones up nowadays for a fraction of the price of even a 1/2 right Mini.
VW campers are the same, and for the reasons Mark outlined above.
back in the early 90s, loads of guys our age had Beetles, but now they have families and a bit of spare cash (where is my spare cash? Oh yeah, i bought a camper ). Beetles don't realy fit with family life, so Campers have gone daft, even T25s! Splities are the equivelent of a Mk1 Cooper S, and prices pretty well mirror them.
The guys who had '70s and '80s Mini 1000s in the '90s are now buying Mk1s, and there just aren't as many old Minis out there to choose from.
disagreeing with Mark slightly, as someone mentioned earlier, I bet A35s and A40s will go up soon, as will Minors......... Not with their 'traditional' buyers, but with people like us. They have already started (due in no small part to Rae Davis at Goodwood) but you can still get them cheap (in the hundreds, not thousands for a decent project base) and do a lot too them - my pal had an A30, lowered on wires with 1275 sprite running gear with a big fat anti roll bar on the front: what a hoot! once a few start selling for decent money, prices for base cars will inevitably go up a bit.
1100 / 1300 family will probably go the same way as well.
Me, i seem to have found a niche in buying old A series engined racing cars in bits - no one else seems to have cottoned on to them either. This is never more evident than when selling them..........
I'd probably agree on the age range thing...dad was early 70's when he bought Pete's JFO mainly to re-live his early 30's.....my teens were spent in 205's and indeed I have a 1.9 GTI now (£500 off my dentist how good was that )
My gut feeling is that is what's happened with Mk1/2 Escorts....those around at the time have now re-bought their youth so those cars now for sale are going to younger people with lesser depth to their pockets (cue levelling off on prices)
It's all cyclical but I live in hope that over the next few months i'll happen upon something again
i'm finding my mind wondering what's about.
it appears to now be sold, where did i put that humble pie about
