Classics · Bought directly
Sell a classicwithout restoring it first.
Pre-war through the seventies and eighties, muscle, trucks, imports and oddities. Finished cars, half-finished projects, and things that have not run since the Clinton administration.
What decides the number
The title, before anything else about the car
This is the single most common thing that stops a classic selling, and it is worth resolving before it becomes urgent. No title, a bonded title, an out-of-state title in a dead relative’s name, a bill of sale and nothing more — every one of those is workable and every one changes the number. Tell us which situation you are in at the start rather than at pickup.
Numbers-matching, or honestly not
Whether the engine and transmission are the ones it left the factory with is a large part of the value on anything collectible, and it is checkable. A correct-date replacement is fine and worth saying. A running small block that was never in this car is also fine — as long as nobody is told otherwise.
Where the rust is, not how much
Surface rust on a quarter panel is a weekend. Rotted floors, frame rails, torque boxes and shock towers are structural and decide whether the car is restorable at all. Photograph the underside, the trunk floor and the rockers — that is what anyone serious will ask for first.
Completeness, because some of it cannot be bought
Missing trim, badges, correct glass, a dash bezel or a specific carburettor can be genuinely unobtainable on a low-production car, and a "95 percent complete" project can be stalled by the missing five. Boxes of parts in the corner of the garage count and should be mentioned.
Documentation and who owned it
Build sheet, window sticker, protect-o-plate, original bill of sale, a folder of receipts, photographs of it when it was new. Provenance is worth real money here in a way it is worth in no other category on this site.
Mileage, which barely matters
Six figures on a fifty-year-old car tells you almost nothing, and low mileage on a car that sat in a damp barn is often worse than high mileage on one that was driven and maintained. Condition and originality do the work that mileage does elsewhere.
Have this ready
- What title you hold, in whose name, and from which state
- Whether the engine and transmission are original to the car
- Photographs of the underside, floors, trunk floor and rockers
- Any documentation at all — build sheet, receipts, old photographs
- An inventory of parts that are off the car but included
Whole, or in parts?
Breaking a complete and original car is usually destroying something that cannot be put back, and we will say so rather than take it. The calculation flips entirely on a shell that is too far gone: a rust-through body with a correct drivetrain and good trim is worth considerably more distributed among the people restoring the same model than it is as a car nobody will ever finish.
- Numbers-matching drivetrains out of unrestorable shells
- Original trim, badges, glass and brightwork
- Correct carburettors, intakes and date-coded components
- Anything reproduction parts do not exist for
Questions we get about classics
There is no title. Can I still sell it?
Usually yes. It is the most common question on this page and it is rarely the obstacle people expect — the route depends on your state and on whether the last registered owner can be traced. What matters is telling us at the start, because it changes the process, not the interest.
It has not run in twenty years.
Normal, and not a problem. A car that has sat needs a fuel system, brakes, fluids and tyres, and every one of those is expected. Please do not pour fuel in and try to start it before selling — a seized engine turned over in anger is worth less than a seized engine left alone.
It is a half-finished project in pieces.
We buy those. Be realistic about what is done and what is not, and inventory the parts. The projects that are hardest to value are not the incomplete ones — they are the ones described as nearly finished.
Should I restore it first?
Almost never. Restoration costs are very difficult to recover on anything short of a genuinely rare car, and a half-restoration done to sell reduces value rather than adding it, because the buyer now has to undo choices they did not make.
Tell us what you have. One form, a person reads it, and we come back either way.
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