Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Trad prices ..versus owners dreams..

That sounds like AI generation or a 'voice to text' app used without supervision ... scrappy and careless.

You see the same things in automatically generated subtitles.

K

'what's the lowest you'll take for it' is surely human nature. It's probably a bit clumsy as an opening gambit, but certainly cuts out all the messing about and gets straight to the point......
No one ever says 'what's the most you'll take for it, let me pay over your asking price'.........🤷🏻‍♂️
A cheeky initial offer is a better opener I think, it at least opens things up for a counter offer from the seller and gets negotiations moving.

One sellers 'timewaster' is another sellers buyer. Surely it's the job of the seller to do their best to sell the car....

It is now, more than ever before, a buyers market. Not just Morgans, all classic or 'hobby cars' are affected, the market is dead. Even MMC are struggling.
There is choice out there in the market. If a buyer really wants to sell in this market they have to advertise and be prepared to sell for a fair and current price.

Hanging on for 'what it was worth' is foolish, the market decides what it is worth not the seller.
I accept it's disappointing if someone's pride and joy isn't worth what it was several years ago, but it's worth what it's worth now.

The market will probably keep going down so an offer today might look pretty generous next spring.......

If owners only bought a car as somewhere safe to put some pension money for a few years that's surely a risky strategy. Morgan's have done well over the years and held on to their values pretty well, but as with all 'investments' values can go down as well as up.......

See any loss in value as the cost of fun..... Any hobby has a price, owning a Morgan is no different.
Sell and put the money in to something else that brings as much or more, fun, enjoyment or satisfaction and put it down down to experience...........

To me, it just invites the response "What's the highest you'll go? I've told you what I want."

But yeah, the classic car market is declining, and a car's value next year will be lower than it is this year. Much the best to treat them as a hobby not an investment.

As I have said before I amortize my toys over a 3 year period and anything left at the end of play is a bonus.

Money has never meant much to me it is just a conduit to life with no real value at all, giving it away is where it's only real value lies.

Paul J is right in calling them out as toys.

Well said Rich.
I absolutely agree with those sentiments.
What’s the old saying?

“Happiness is wanting what you have, not having what you want”

Bud
4/4 - Stanley

Bud, so true as many people never attain that harmony and are forever seeking the next want - we are fortunate in so many ways to share this feeling of equilibrium.

Take care and get a little stronger every day as I'm sure you can see the track now

Always be happy with what you have rather than what you want. Its good to have aspirations as long as they are relatively achievable. To use Richard's vernacular I always pay cash and I immediately 100% amortise the cost, so if at some point in the future we come to sell the car, any money received is a bonus.

And I found more so with Morgans than any other car I've owned they can be a real drain on the pocket considering their relative simplicity in getting them running the way they should. The Morgan I sell is always in much better condition than the Morgan I bought

But the reward comes on those great days when you can savour the Morgan in its element.

I suspect I have typed along these lines many times before....? A bit of a ramble...

The only way I could afford a m/cycle was to buy an old dog of a machine and try to make it better fit my ideals, the same process carried on into cars in time. As more time passed I slowly but surely became more capable in terms of nailing old duds back together again to provide my personal transportation requirements, thus whatever I spent on my hobby was justified as transport needs to some extent..

With the passage of more time, I moved from m/cycles into car ownership and in time another far from new car was bought for family duties, being driven by my better half.. Now a two car family both of which I would repair and maintain...

Another few years pass and I reach the stage where my daily transport requires to be a pickup truck given my home improvement planing. That my interest in old sports cars, was ever ticking away in the background, I seek out another old sports car in dire need of some care and attention.... that it will take a lot of time, effort and more money than I have readily available to drag it kicking and screaming through an MOT, matters not a jot, it is a just hobby car and it is mine.. now owning three cars..!

With the passage of yet more time and working my way up in terms of the type of sports cars and their possible market value, the justification was ever along the lines of, well if I need cash in a hurry I can sell it reasonably easily..All of which seemed to be a reasonable idea which seems to have covered a few decades..?

In time with a few breaks from improving the nest and surroundings, my hobby car would be traded for one requiring a little less work and hopefully higher up the sports car iconic scale from my humble beginnings with a well rotted frog eye Sprite, working at the side of the road outside my parents council tenement flat, till by the time 2002 arrived I had long since become a mortgage indebted home "owner of , a flat, then moved to a semi, then finally an old agricultural small holding, and buying my current Morgan, which was restored to show quality by another....! The idea of buying such a machine, went kinda went against the grain, though the thinking being, that it could be enjoyed immediately, and whatever spare time I might have, could then be directed to a last push on home improvements that had gone on and on and on....

Again the hobby car was still valued as a hobby which could be converted to cash, should that be required, no chance of making profit ever entered my head...Fortunately for me, I still own My Morgan, the "family" car and ridiculous at it appears to me, I have also in the last few years come to own another hobby related car in the form of a C4S... Nuts or what....? I suspect that savings were used to finance my hobby and much else I have been involved in over the years, as opposed to using the easy money systems, it took perhaps more time and effort to arrive at my current situation.... but that worked out for us over many decades.

As to the value of my "fleet"... I suspect diminishing quite rapidly in market terms, but not in my evaluation of it`s worth to me....My old sports car ownership has provided returns over the years far in excess of any monetary value attributable to them at any time, and even less so now...Given my advancing years, if in time I live long enough to become unable to continue driving, I wonder if having one or more of them serving as just as a mix of nostalgia and garage art, might serve a purpose for me... time will tell.

It would seem quite a few of my similarly aged acquaintances have over the years ended up with a collection of three or more cars,, at least one of which seems likely to be a sports or performance machine. Also looking at pics in motoring mags, it seems there is a lot of grey hair to be seen, even in the ownership of modern day automotive icons...Quite how that might work out in time...Hmm...?

As ever enjoying that which you have and while you can, seems to be a reasonable plan of action..? As to monetary value.. no pockets in a shroud comes to mind...

I've always as far as possible avoided the mechanical and electrical tinkering often associated with bringing an older vehicle be it car or bike into roadworthy reliability. Not got the patience or inclination, I'm expert at taking things apart but crap at putting them back together especially if a given procedure, steps, operating tolerances are required. never seemed to have the right tool when its needed.

Started too young with company cars and doing vast business miles to have to worry or want to be tinkering, when fully trained car mechanics were paid to look after my cars. It's not something I've wanted to do since I've retired over 20 years ago, never enough garage space and keeping anything any length of time living by the sea, the salty air soon sees metalwork, mechanical and electrical components off, no matter what you do to try and retard the corrosive air impact.

Give me reliability and easy of use any day over tinkering, although I fully understand why people do enjoy the tinkering and with the poor track record of Morgans and their general reliability, I often wonder why I enjoy them so much........... I

I've just put the Morgan parked in front of my house onto the driveway, as a old codger gets out of the passenger side, his wife's parking attempts outside the house made me move the Morgan (NOT TO TEMPT FATE) and his first words were appreciative 'nice looking car what is it' ' Morgan' was my reply, his retort 'they are expensive aren't they', what can you say other than to thank him for his kind words........how some people judge you by your possessions. I smile when I used the expression old codger, I'm 70 next year and still going strong, how do others see me.?

Ah, wid god the giftie gie us......