RE: [T3] 1970 Squareback For Sale

[Jim Adney <jadney@vwtype3.org>]

On 28 Jun 2007 at 6:27, Schlegel, Richard wrote:

> I saw a response recently that said it was ok to post vehicles (type 3)
> for sale here. What better place to post it? You guys have had as much a
> hand in fixing it as I have. Anyway, She is asking $3900.00 for it. Is
> this too much? It's so hard to tell. Prices for these are all over the
> map.

$3900 should get you a really nice nearly stock rust free late type 3. For most 
people, the more it's been "customized" the more the value goes down. 
Regardless of how cool someone may feel about the special things they've done 
to their car, almost any change lowers the number of people who will agree.

Prices vary a lot because the quality of work also varies a lot. A rebuilt 
engine might be a true work of craftsmanship or a pile of junk. The same would 
apply to any work done on a car. The only sure thing is the quality of the 
original construction.

Thus, the only way for someone to get a good idea is to look the car over in 
person, and even then things like the engine rebuild quality are total 
unknowns. I've spent maybe $2000 on just the parts and machining for a really 
nice engine rebuild, and then added in countless hours of assembly and 
machining time of my own, while others have gone out and bought off the shelf 
rebuilt engines for $600. The latter can probably be counted on to last 10k 
miles, which pretty much makes them a waste of time and money.

So, don't tell me that the generator and voltage regulator have been replaced. 
Tell me that the electrical and charging systems have been checked and are 
working perfectly (if that's true.)

TheSamba.com is a good place to advertise your car. You should probably browse 
there first to get a better idea of what cars in similar condition are likely 
to sell for in your area, then post some good photos and complete description 
with an asking price. When I look at some of these descriptions I'm often 
struck by how incomplete they are. In some cases they may just be avoiding some 
topics, but most of the time I get the impression that it just didn't occur to 
them that they really needed to think about all the things that they needed to 
say about their car. It would pay to write up a text file on your computer 
first, so you could think about it and edit it, and then copy and paste that 
description into thesamba ad. If you try to just write the description on the 
fly you WILL forget things.

Use line breaks, blank lines and organize. Runon sentences and stream-of-
consciousness paragraphs are mind numbing.

-- 
Jim Adney
jadney@vwtype3.org
Madison, WI USA

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