I write to the Grand Celestial Master of the SDMB in the belief that no lesser Doper could answer this correctly.
America left several Lunar Rover electric automobiles on the Moon, after the Apollo Program ended.
What would be their current value, resale, as used cars?
If you factor in the retrieval costs, something like negative ten billion dollars.
They were engineered to work in the lunar gravity, so the safe loads and suspension design won’t be exactly happy in Earth’s gravity. They were fit for purpose as a lunar rover. You probably need to work out the business case of setting up a used car lot on the moon. Not a lot of customers, so the price will be pretty low. As a device for driving about on the Earth’s surface, it won’t work, so its value is very low. If you had a car lot full of them, you would be selling them for scrap. Reasonably valuable scrap, with some nice metals to recover. But as a car, zero.
Recovered by some miracle (perhaps an alien passing by drops one off as a joke) the value would be difficult. NASA will claim ownership - so it will be illegal to sell it. So the value is zero. As a black market item, sold to a very rich collector, probably tens of millions. Still way short of what they cost. There are a couple left that never flew, so it would not be unique, but as an item that actually drove of the lunar surface, that increases perceived value immensely.
Technically, they’re golf carts, not cars.
They would no more be ‘used cars’ than any other significant, non-automobile piece of Apollo hardware. If technology was to the point where any of the large stuff left on the Moon could be brought back, and if NASA (i.e. the US Govt) was ok with it being taken & sold, it would certainly be an ultimate collectable to some rich guy.
But like I said, it would never have anything to do with the ‘used car’ market as it doesn’t belong to that group in any way, shape or form.
In the scenario where kindly aliens retrieve it, how sound a claim could NASA make on it? It’s been abandoned for half a century - does NASA still legally own it?
Arguably the golf cart was the “rickshaw” or Modular Equipment Transporter. This is because it was Alan Shepard that drove the golf balls on the moon, and that mission was Apollo 14, the only one which used the Modular Equipment Transporter. The (later) missions carrying the rovers were sadly devoid of golf.
From a technical point of view, there is not much doubt about a common thread between golf carts and the rovers.
Article VIII of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty:
In other words, stuff that the U.S. launches into space belongs to the U.S. permanently. From what I’ve been able to gather, there isn’t (yet) a corpus of “space salvage” law like there is for marine salvage.
Thanks. I guess I’ll have to hand it back if the aliens deliver it to my garden. (Assuming that the UK recognises this treaty…)
IIRC, they work fine back on Earth, I think I remember seeing a TV presenter driving one. There were a few test models built before the rovers that went to the moon, and they are kicking around in various museums.
Edit - there is a video at the bottom of the wiki article of one being driven on Earth, while the astronauts were training.
Hmm, do they have VIN numbers? Wikipedia says (with a referenced cite) they were made by GM. Does that mean that the lunar rovers are Chevys?
The UK was one of the first signatories, along with the U.S. and the USSR, so you’re out of luck there.
I suppose you can always demand that the U.S. “furnish identifying data prior to their return.” To cover your bases there, you should probably post some flyers or something reading “FOUND: one lunar rover. Call 555-1212 with description for return.” Wouldn’t want it to end up in the wrong hands, after all.
There was indeed a training rover, it was designed to imitate the real thing under Earth gravity. For instance, the Earth-bound model had rubber tires, and the ones that actually flew had wire-mesh wheels. I suppose the frame, suspension, etc. were also different for the training rover, which didn’t need to be as lightweight and to fold like a handkerchief.
Quoth NASA:
Thanks, that’s probably what I saw on TV.
And yet, neither a dollar figure, nor a weigh-in from The Great One. 
Perhaps he is awaiting a quote from alien civilizations who could recover and deliver it.
Since even Cecil’s communication is limited to light speed, it could be some time…
Surely these wouldn’t be ‘used cars’ anyway - they’d be vintage motors.
Not to hijack, but why would you want to sell it as a used car? That would be like recovering the Ark of the Covenant and asking how much you could get for the melt value of the gold in it.
That won’t last long, as I believe that a very compelling case can be made that NASA abandoned them, and as such they are subject to salvage by anybody who comes along.
A legally recognized form of “finders, keepers”.
I agree with others that their value as vehicles is basically nil, as is their value as recyclable material, so their only value is going to be as collector’s items, in which case they should be worth quite a lot indeed, due to their initial scarcity and the difficulty in obtaining them.
Do you have a concrete reason why you think the international treaty MikeS referenced would not be upheld?