Recent Email - 246 for sale.

Check out this email I got from Michael Sheehan:
We are pleased to offer 1972 USA Model Dino 246 GTS s/n 04884. Scored Platinum at Concorso Arizona in April 2007. Priced right at $179,500.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1972 Dino (Ferrari) 246 GTS Serial Number 04884


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Only three owners from new. Stripped and repainted in 1987 with excellent older Ferrari red lacquer with excellent tan leather Daytona seats with black inserts. A.C., P.W. No accidents, no stories. Includes a full set of tools, the jack kit and the owner's manuals. A well sorted Dino that shows pride of ownership. Much well documented recent work. Won the Khaki's Award at Concorso Italiano in August 2006. Scored Platinum at Concorso Arizona in April 2007.

Priced right at $179,500.
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

I saw that.
It looks great, even has the USA R2 microswitch mounted on the aft valve cover. Lovely Daytona seats, a shade different than the doors and not recorded in the Dino Register until 2005 when Sheehan had it the first time. The DR shows it as recently flipped from FoA last month.

Platinum winner but no owner's pouch, incomplete books, and several items in the tool kit are suspect; esp. plastic window winder crank and the screwdriver's look like repros.
When dealer's get into the frenzy passing cars between them does that increase price pressure or is it a signal that this is the end of the market run?

Has the momentum of price appreciation we saw last summer continued, stayed the same, or slowed?

 

The car isn't passing within dealers, unless something out of the ordinary has happened, the car has been consigned to sheehan to sell. if you read the description, it refers to the current owner. sheehan WILL market the car and put money into advertising, where as others won't.

as for the status of the momentum, i think it has stayed the same or possible slowed a little. however, real buyers are buying cars, as evidenced even here. the 246 section has seen these buyers surface and contribute to f-chat.

 

I am a real buyer and end user, and I paid a lot of money for my car. I have absolutely no intention of ever selling it, and if prices go down, I'd likely buy another or something else in the genre. I hope my son enjoys driving them as much as I intend to!

I personally believe that the Bear, Stearns hedge fund collapse could be the beginning of a severe credit market and investment bank implosion (I was a bond and structured securities trader for 20 years) which may lead to some serious hard asset price readjustments in the not-very-distant future. It may also have rather dire implications for your brokerage firm, and for the funds you hold with them. (Anybody remember Long Term Capital Management circa 1998?)

So, exogenous forces could drive down all collectible prices, but, barring that, there is a limited supply of Dinos, and it seems steady to growing demand as more people see them, and cars like omgjohn's dave's and others attract folks' attention.

Yours Faithfully,
Chicken Little

 

mike,

you are one of the end users that has joined ranks that i was referring to. i agree that the hedge fund/sub-prime problems are definitely going to affect the market, but in times past, market problems like these tend to drive people towards other markets than just securities. i am not saying that this is like the late 80's and suddenly cars/art/etc will become the investment promisedland, but generally when people stop dumping cash in the stock markets, they dump it elsewhere. even that being the case, i am sure there are a good number of people that made so much money that they jumped into other markets and if they go away they will affect the other markets, but that number is relatively small.

forgetting all that, we can not rule out the "i wish i had this car when i was a teenager" factor. the baby-boom generation is still moving increasingly towards the "fullfilment" of dreams, whether it be cars or not. given the transfer of wealth that is taking place from the previous generation to the baby-boom generation, the baby-boom generation having more disposible income due to their own productivity, and the fact the the dino/daytona fall right into this territory, i think these cars will stay the same and/or appreciate a little over the next several years.

the muscle car market has gotten crazy and we all know it will correct. the muscle car market is us driven. the world car market for the same generation drives prices now more than anything. when the dino/daytona price jump first started, you would see cars advertised in euro car/uk car magazines for much less than current us sales prices. the dollar is now weaker and yet, even they have adjusted their prices accordingly. between russia/china/india/etc there are ever increasing numbers of world buyers for cars that were previously out of reach. frankly, i am shocked we haven't yet seen the vacuum of cars from the us (based on the weak dollar) to other parts of the world. even given the uncertain us economy, it seems to me that world demand has increased significantly over the past two years. this should be factored into the equation.

and like you, i love these cars for what they are. i have too many, based on unusual circumstances, but i definitely have my favorites that i am/will be dumping money into. personally, i would love to see the days of $35k dino's again (i walked away from a driver gts at that price in 98). to me, it only means i could drive the crap out them without fear of loss - that is assuming that parts are available at a consistent and economical level.

 

+1

Merrill Lynch's auction of assets couldn't be a more public display of that failing.

 

O'Neill said there was no "clear sign" that the "contagion" had spread from subprime/mortgages/CDO's to other credit markets yet! A pal who is starting up a cedit-based fund and has seen crazy volatility in spreads and pricing in the past few weeks might say the "signs" aren't "clear" because no one wants to buy anything. It's structuredspeak that translates (but not in a way any regulator could nail him for) to: "We are making sure that no trades print at distress liquidation levels so that we don't have to mark our collateral and all our own trading inventory down. Because if we did that, our regulatory capital would likely be so far below statutory requirements Merrill would go into liquidation."

Off topic, but on message!