The Super Duty coupes were built for quarter-mile racing, what is now usually called “bracket racing.” They had plexiglass windows, heavy duty suspension to keep the rear wheels from too much wheel hopping and 389 cubic-inch V8s, some bored 0.30 over, so rumor goes.

The one that sold most recently had just 3,1165 miles on the odometer and was bought by someone from someone who obviously didn’t know what the car’s providence was. In fact, with the faded paint and generally appearance of the car being what it was, bidding started at just $500 on November first. At one point in the auction, the seller actually turned down $160,000 – after being asked some questions about the windows and such, when interested and savvy bidders began to see, via the photos, exactly what this car was about.

With just 7 minutes before the end of the auction, and bidding stalled at $95,000, bidding frenzy took over as one bidder got in the fray with another and it ended at the $226,521.00 mentioned.

Now this is not typical eBay stuff. In fact, eBay is not a particularly good place to gauge the market. People looking at eBay these days are looking for bargains. They probably don’t have a lot of money; maybe they still have decent credit. But the people bidding there, aren’t the same folks you’d see at Barrett-Jackson, or even a regionl auction in a backwater such as Puyallup, Washington – where Silver Auctions held collector car auctions from 1989 through 2007, in conjunction with the Corvette and High Performance Swap Meet.

Yes, the collector car market is slowly adjusting. Fake “Road-Runners” or GTOs or “Shelby-Mustang” recreations – called “tribute cars” most recently, to sound better than “fake” – were hitting $75,000 to $80,000, three years ago, or even two years ago. That’s going to change, because the people buying them, might be the same people now working for a new deal on their mortgage.

But cars such as that Super Duty coupe will probably stay strong in value, at least through spring. By then, we’ll know if all this “bailout” money the Federal Treasury is throwing around does enough to keep money throwing through the system in something other than T-bills.

Right now the spending slow down is mostly hitting the mid-ranged classics, the $20-30,000 cars. If any economists ever brave the official term of Recession then we might start to see it hit the some-what larger dollar cars.

However, as in any Recession or Depression… there are still those who have money and they will still be more than willing to pay that top dollar for what they want.

Thanks for the comment Mark C.

I don’t know that the prices have really started to fall. It’d be interesting to track what’s going on at Barrett-Jackson this year vs. last year.