Crashing to earth? The market prices for 1960’s 'muscle" cars (Camaros, Mustangs) went up like a rocket, in the late 1990’s. I wonder if many of the newly-rich (who paid absurdly high prices for these cars) got wiped out in this crash.
Are there any reports of big price drops for these cars?
I wonder what the fate of many of these cars will be-there are only so many Jay lenos to collect them.
I just saw a thing yesterday about the super luxurious car market. The guy said business was booming and he didn’t feel bad that he deals in ultra-wealth when the rest of the world is freaking out.
I think that Barrett’s auction is in January. You’ll be able to gauge the market from that.
My dad is involved in a Mustang restoration and sales business. Their problem now is that they’re just having a hard time finding good cars - they get them from all over the country and sell them all over the world so it seems crazy to say they’ve “sold them all” but it’s true that the quality of available cars has gone down. Dad got into the business in 2001.
With the volatility in the stock market it could be that these remain one of your safer ‘investment vehicles’. While the CC market may have come off its highs from a couple of years ago, the fact remains that they’re not making any of these anymore and for some of the more desirable, rarer models the demand will always be there.
It’s true that they’re getting harder to find. When I first got the motor bug when I was 14 or so there were stories everywhere about how someone “Found it in a barn” or it was “Sitting in pieces in a basket” or “A little old lady drove it once a week to church” and the sellers didn’t know what they had or what it was worth and guys were able to pick up truly classic cars and bikes for a song. Those days are long, long gone. Every barn has been raided, every junk yard in the middle of nowhere has had the frames and bodies of the classics taken already. Every seller knows that there’s a serious market out there for prized vehicles and they know (and lots of times over-estimate) what those things are worth. There may still be a few gems waiting to be found out there, but they’re the exception and not the rule. It’s true that for the truly classic ones there aren’t any 69 Camaro’s out there that are worth rehabbing that haven’t been already. That means to me that the market is rapidly drying up and the ones that exist are pretty much it for the supply*. This should keep prices high for the next long while.
*The 69 Camaro might be a bad example since there are enough after market parts out there these days that you can pretty much assemble a brand new one out of parts but you get the gist.
ETA- If anyone knows of a sweet little old farmer with a Harley Panhead that he’s willing to sell cheap to an enthusiast or for the scrap value or anything, please tell me and only me. 
I just watched an auction on speed network. A 69 Ford Mustang Cobra sold for $410.000. Not too shabby.
A Tucker crossed the $1 million mark recently. Classic car pricing tends to spike in waves. When the people who drove a certain era car reach the age when they have lots of disposable income (say shortly after the last kid leaves home) they start buying up the cars of their youth, which drives the price up. When they exhaust the market, or the fad passes for a particular make/model, then the prices drop back down a bit.
It will be interesting to see what happens in the next couple of years as the kids who grew up driving the early Seventies clunkers will soon be getting to the “average age” of your typical car collector. Will we see Vegas suddenly shoot up in price to match that of a 69 Mustang or Camaro? What about the Japanese cars? A lot of “purists” don’t see the imports as being “collectable” (save for the German makes and/or the exotics), is that going to change or stay the same? Then we’ve got the stylistic abortions which came out in the 80s. Is anyone really going to want one of those? And how about parts? Stamping out aftermarket fenders is fairly cheap and easy, but what about the plastics and electronics? You can do some cannabilization from wrecks, but the plastic from that era tended to not hold up very well, and in the case of the electronics, I imagine some of the chips needed are no longer made.