Financial Opportunities Uncovered: A Keeler & Nadler Family Wealth Podcast

Garage Dreams on a Smart Budget.  Collecting Cars the Right Way

• Andy Keeler

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Ever felt your pulse jump at the sound of a big-block V-8 or the whistle of a twin-turbo Flat 6? We chase that feeling the smart way, sitting down with Ectore Tranquilo, an analytical chemist by trade who built a reputation as a sharp-eyed car buyer, restorer, collector and advisor. Together, Andy and Ectore map out how to turn a garage dream into a confident purchase, from tracking down a lost family car to navigating auctions without getting played.

We start by defining the “why” behind the buy—daily enjoyment, investment-grade originality, or a restomod that blends heritage with modern reliability. Ectore breaks down demographic waves that move the market: why C1 Corvette prices are softening, C2 Corvette’s are hot plus how C3 Corvette, Mustangs, IROC-Z's and Toyota Supras are climbing. We unpack the rise of restomods, where factory lines meet today's power, modern brakes, and Apple CarPlay.   These are cars you can actually drive yet often command six-figure results at auction.

Then we get tactical. Learn the tools and sources that separate a great deal from a headache: marque registries, museum and track VIN archives and expert reference books. We lay out the real auction math—fees, transport, timing premiums, and air bidding—and how to protect yourself as both buyer and seller. Finally, we peek into modern exotics, from Ferrari allocation lists and anti-flip rules to picking the right model for your budget and exit plan.

If you want a clear playbook to find, verify, and enjoy the right car without overpaying, this conversation will save you time, money, and heartache. Subscribe, share this episode with a fellow gearhead, and leave a quick review telling us your dream car and why.   It'll help others find the show and keep the engines running!

The opinions expressed in this program are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations.

It is only intended to provide education about finance, tax, retirement and related planning topics. To determine which investments or strategies may be appropriate for you, consult your financial, tax or legal advisor prior to implementing. Any past performance discussed during this program is no guarantee of future results.

Any indices referenced for comparison are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. As always please remember investing involves risk and possible loss of principal capital; please seek advice from a licensed professional.

Keeler & Nadler Family Wealth is a registered investment adviser. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Keeler & Nadler Family Wealth and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. No advice may be rendered by Keeler & Nadler Family Wealth unless a client service agreement is in place.


SPEAKER_02:

Have you always dreamt of owning one or more of the muscle cars from your childhood? Or are exotic cars more your speed? Today on Financial Opportunities Uncovered, we will arm you with the tools you will need to make yourself a keen buyer of that classic car or truck you have made space for in the garage. Our guest today is Hector Tranquilo. His story is not all that different from many of our clients. Highly educated, great career, and has reached that point in life when folks like him realize it doesn't pay to have the nicest headstone in the graveyard. Hector is an analytical chemist by day, but his passion lies in his garage, but his garage is a warehouse. So Hector, your name. It's more memorable than a 1955 going Mercedes. Where is your family from originally?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, originally we're from southern Italy. My great-grandfather came over in 1921.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow. Okay. So let's start a little bit with your background. When and how did you start buying, restoring, selling, trading?

SPEAKER_01:

Aaron Ross Powell I was introduced into car culture by my father at about age five. And he was uh an avid car guy. And uh when I was little, my job, uh my first job I remember helping him with cars was I was the tire washer during car wash every Saturday and Sunday.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

So that was my job. Uh I was allowed to touch the wheels and the tires. That's it. Yeah, that was about it. Five, yeah, I get it. And then uh as I got a little bit older, I was allowed to uh also wash the vinyl roof or convertible top, whichever car it was doing. So uh I moved up to the upper part of the car. But uh as time progressed, uh I took on the job of washing the cars myself. But uh as I got older, he uh really didn't have a diet desire for me to follow that car culture. He wanted me, he was more into education.

SPEAKER_02:

Aaron Ross Powell So you got a degree from is that Otterbine?

SPEAKER_01:

I did. I went to Otterbine, uh, received a BS in chemistry, with a minor in mathematics, and uh I'm a chemist to this day.

SPEAKER_02:

So you're a smart guy, probably decent income, um, disposable income that you can use to buy cars. The cars that your dad had, why did he have so many cars? What kind of cars were those? What did your dad do?

SPEAKER_01:

My dad, uh my dad at the time was consider the job no longer exists, but he was originally a teacher while he was going through his master's program. He taught uh what they can called uh advanced math in high school back in the in the 60s. And then he uh graduated and he was a uh computer systems analyst, which back in the day there was no programs to do anything. He built programming to to complete a job. So he he worked for Westinghouse uh over in Pennsylvania, and uh he was a systems analyst. And those jobs are they have longevity to them, and then you move on to different jobs. So he worked at multiple companies as I was growing up. Aaron Ross Powell So where did the cars come in? Oh when he was um when he was a younger person, he had uh 59 Bonneville convertible, and during that time he also had a custom one-off show car drag car that competed in uh what would be considered like the Riddler of today back in the 60s. And uh he was married before he met my mother and was going through divorce, and he lost those two cars, the Bonneville and the sport car, uh in the divorce, and then after the divorce he bought a 65 Buick Riviera Gronsport. Okay. Fully loaded um option the way he wanted, no air conditioning, none of the creature comfort stuff except deluxe interior and the vinyl top, which made it a late production car. So he had that car until 1976, and we also had a 62 Cadillac all-white convertible and then a 69 all-black convertible. So the the the caddies, you know, we're his everyday driver, really. And we sold off the 62 caddy and kept just the uh 69 and the 65 until my dad bought my mom forced my dad to buy a new car in 1976. Which I will never forget because uh it was a six-cylinder Buick Regal, and uh he drove it to work, which he used to drive the Sharon, Pennsylvania to work. And I'll never forget him coming home because he always got home about six o'clock. And we were in the kitchen and he came home, and my mom's like, So how was the new car on the way to work? And he's like, That gutless wonder almost got me killed on the way to work today. Because I went to pass a truck and it went nowhere. So he liked the power. Yeah, it came from my great my grandfather. My grandfather was uh also one that he had a heavy foot and always bought a car, special order car with the biggest motor he could get. You know, so you come by it on Yeah, yeah, yeah. He used to always my my grandfather, he'd always be like, Don't get pinched on your way out of town, you know, because I'd go over to see my grandparents. So he he was a speeder too, so it's okay.

SPEAKER_02:

So so you graduate, advanced degree, you're a chemist. How did you start collecting cars? What was the first car you purchased for yourself?

SPEAKER_01:

That would have been my first or second year. I I bought a 70 Corvette. Okay. Cool coupe, uh, automatic car. Um, nothing really spectacular. Just uh it was an okay car, Cortez Silver black car. Um and at that time I still had my first car that I had bought when I was when I got when I was 16, I had a 1982 Z-28 that we had bought used. It was two years old. In 1984, I bought it. I still had that car. And then I had a beater car. I had a Mercury Lynx as my everyday beater. So I had the Camaro and then I bought the Corvette, but my everyday car was this little Mercury Lynx. Gotcha. And then my best friend and I in high school built a car, a 69 Pontiac Le Mans convertible. And we had built that car in high school, and we bought it from the original owners. It was a three-speed car, and we put a 65 big block out of a 65 Corvette in it, and four-speed, and Chevelle rear end. Wow. So what color was it? We it was originally a green, black interior car, black top, and then we moved uh we painted it red with black interior black top.

SPEAKER_02:

When I was in high school, there was a guy that had, I think, a 67 Le Mans, big block car. He owned a classic car dealership near Newark. I went to high school in Granville.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

And he and a bunch of his at the time I would call them older buddies, they'd come to the high school and play basketball before school started. And I remember sitting in a classroom in the middle of that school, and when he started that car, the whole building shook. I can imagine that, Lamons, that you had the same thing.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it was we'd built it really. It was funny because we really kind of, now we look back, now that I look back on it, we didn't know what we were doing. You know, we had found this motor where somebody had advertised in Craigslist. It was out of a drag car. Uh then later on found out it was out of a 65 Corvette. And so by the time we finished, it took us, he bought that car right about the summer of our both our sophomore and junior year. And it took us till a week before we graduated high school to get the car finished. So we were done. So when I had the 70 Corvette, he still had the Pontiac. So he wanted a Corvette and I wanted the Pontiac, so we swapped cars. So I traded him the car. So I ended up with the Pontiac. So that car led into my other best friend and who I just spoke to yesterday and sent him to go look at a car for me. Um, he had a 71 SS 454 Chevelle. Wow. Bench seat, four-speed car. He was the second owner. And he had it all through high school. And uh it was all black car. And I don't know how I don't remember how it all came to be, but he decided he didn't want the Chevelle anymore. He wanted to buy something else. He had a drag car he'd built too. So he called me up. So I sold the Pontiac to a guy here in Bexley, Ohio, who currently still has the car. Wow. And just contacted me about buying it back. Really? Are you going to do that? Uh we've been having some negotiations, but he's he's had the car now, I believe, I believe 30 or 31 years.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow.

SPEAKER_01:

But it still exists and it's over in Bexley.

SPEAKER_02:

That's so cool. And maybe we'll get to this later, but I know that one of the cars your dad had, you found it and bought it. Correct. How do people find these cars that maybe they grew up with? Their dad had a car when they were 16, leaves the family, makes its way around the United States. Five owners later, they find this car.

SPEAKER_01:

There's a couple different ways. In Ohio, if you want to search a title, you have to be a dealer. So we do own a dealer's license, which can help us search for something. Um, modern technology, a lot of people put there's car groups out on Facebook that you can join, um, like C1 Owners Group, C2 Owners Group. And guys and Camaros are like that too. A lot of guys like have information or photographs from their dad's car, and they'll put it out on the uh on the social media pages and say, here's a picture of my dad's car, here's what it was, here's the last place it was located, here's its serial number. Does anybody have anything? And you they'll get feedback a lot of times. Um because people track that. And you can find sometimes you can find that. Um we uh are good friends with uh a man out of uh New York, Kevin McKay, does Corvette repair, he tracks down race cars. And the way he does it is all race cars that core he does only Corvette race cars, but all cars that race that the tracks would register their VIN numbers. So he goes and pulls the record from these tracks, like Daytona or whatever, and he tracks back the VIN numbers. And he's been able to find a lot of vintage cars that way. Where there's a will, there's a way. But social media has really helped out a lot because there are a lot of groups out there, and if you just put the word out. And then like Corvette, there's uh something called the Corvette Registry, and people will voluntarily go in and put their VIN numbers and the year of the car, and they'll put their the ownership. So you can go on those websites and you can look. Like if you knew your dad owned a certain VIN number 57 Corvette, you can go on there and look and see if that number's registered. Okay. And he'll give you the owner and where he's located. One of my cars I actually tracked it back to the well, I tracked it back to the original owner, but the second owner was still alive. The original owner was dead. And uh I tracked it back through uh the archives. And then um Corvette Museum has um some database.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. So for those listeners that have always had a dream of uh of owning uh uh an old car, it seems like car prices and demand sort of align with cer a certain buyer demographic. We all have a car from our past or present that we would like to own, but we may not have the means to purchase it until we're older, have high income, paid off the college debt, maybe put the kids through school. So are the are the hot classics at any given time those cars that a certain demographic grew up with? For example, an auctioneer I met with about my mother's antiques said no one would want her stuff. She was 88. The thing she liked, well, other 80-year-olds liked, and 80-year-olds aren't buying stuff, so it's not worth as much. The auctioneer, he was probably 70 at the time that he was walking through my mom's condo. He owned a Ford Model T. Today that is worth half of what he paid for it in 1980. So are there examples like um the first, well, my first car I had when I was uh 16 years old was a um Oldsmobile Toronto, 67 Olds Toronado front wheel drive. Not a desirable car, and but pretty unique. Um, but my first classic car that I bought when I was old enough to really buy something was a Camaro 60 68 Camaro SS. Um it would seem like the 68 Camaros maybe now aren't worth as much as they were 10 years ago, but maybe the 70, 73s are worth more. Is there are there trends to that?

SPEAKER_01:

There are trends to certain things. Um, like you said, probably 10, 15 years ago, Model A's or Model T's or Model A's, I should say, were very expensive and now they're dirt cheap. I mean, back then you could get a convertible, you know, Model A that was 32,000 and now it's 13,000. Early Corvettes have hit this market now, like C1 Corvettes, unless you have something really special, the prices have slid down because the guys that were interested in those guys are now in their 70s and 80s. Okay. Now the C2 craze is is up 63 through 67 cars because those guys are older and have more money and their kids are out of college. And so the prices of those cars has come up. And then the weird thing is is like now the the later cars, the C three cars. C three is what years 68 through 82. Okay. So all the stingray cars, most people call them. But those cars, especially uh like the mid-70s cars, those are starting to come up. Really? A little bit, not much, but um 69's always hot, 70, 71 hot, 73 is in seven because of the last uh rear chrome bumpers, they've all started to come up now a little bit. Okay. But you see the trend based on age, like you said. Guys my age, I'm f I'll be fifty-eight in January. Okay. So um the cars we had in high school, which is actually kind of comical, is to have a friend that's interested in, he wants to get into this business. He wants to learn how to buy cars and do work and then sell them and keep them for a while. So and I've explained to him one of the things he should look at, and this is may sound a little strange, is to look at mid-80s Camaros and mid-80s Mustangs.

SPEAKER_02:

I was gonna get to that.

SPEAKER_01:

They're crazy right now. Like if I've I've seen some 79, 80, uh, 81 Camaros that here, a couple years ago you know were six, eight thousand dollars, they're going across the auction block now twenty-six to thirty-three thousand dollars. Now you've got to find one that's not all screwed up because most of them, you know, during the s mid-70s, mid-eighties, everybody was doing weird things to them. But IROC Camaros. That's another one, 35,000, 36,000, 33,000. If you can find one that's in not been shape. Yeah, it's not been, you know, the motor hasn't been changed. They haven't done a bunch of stupid stuff to it. And uh Mustangs, uh first uh first year five liters, like the 85, 86, 5 liter stick cars. Those are another car, it's like 30, you know, around 30 grand if you can find one really good that hasn't been screwed up because a lot of them were cut in the race cars. So that that trend is creeping up now. So I told him, I said, rather than screw around in the Corvette world, which is hard to deal with, you should look into starting out doing some of these other cars, cheaper cars that you can get into that you don't have a big investment up front. Anybody usually can do bodywork on them if you need something, and start and see if you really want it want to do this.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Yeah, I remember the 64, 65 Mustangs were hot for a while. Then it was the fastback that you had the Gone in 67s movie that might have helped help with that. When I grew up, so I graduated from high school in '89, and one of my buddies had a five-liter Mustang, and we used to run around town and that thing. And I always loved the power, the way it sounded. And I've seen the value of those cars start to pop, um, even like Toyota Supras and other cars from the 80s and early 90s. I'm starting to see that. So again, it it does really seem like if you were an investor, you want to be kind of looking ahead at what is hot, what's going to be hot next. Um, Corvette play seems to be a little overplayed. Yep. Um me personally, I'm actually looking for a 58 to 60, and I know the color and everything that I'm after, but um I I just love the car, and I'm not buying it as an investment. I'm buying it because I like it. You know, you talked about the the must the 85 Mustang, as long as it hasn't been messed with. When I started collecting cars, everybody wanted more or less showroom quality, everything original. And in fact, I had a Plymouth GTX, and say five to ten years ago, if you went to the Mopar Nats and you saw thousands of Mopar cars, there were a lot of pristine cars that had never been messed with, as opposed to good guys you'd see, you know, Edelbrock this and Moroso that. Um, these these Dodge cars, Mopar cars, were all original and they were selling for really premium prices. And one of my buddies that owns one, I said, you know, this GTX really isn't doing anything for me. I think I'm gonna resto mod it. He said, Oh, don't do that. You're gonna kill the value. And what I've seen is it's actually the opposite. I'm starting to see resto mods sell for$200,000,$250,000. And some of these original cars, they're dropping in value. And I I chalk it up to the fact that most people don't have the skills you do to fix a car. If something doesn't work, they don't know what's how to fix it. And they're gonna have to pay somebody to do it for them. So if they can buy a car with a new motor, new brakes, you know, state-of-the-art brakes as opposed to drum brakes, that's what they're after. Have you kind of noticed that trend too?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's it's funny you say that because I'm actually beginning to build a resto mod for my part my business partner. Um, it's in the shop. And I have a good friend um up in Mount Vernon who was a solid NCRS Corvette Restorer. And he lived that life. And about six eight years ago, he bailed out and he told me. He goes, 'I'm tired.' He goes, 'I'm tired of dealing with these people telling me how to judge deal with my car, judging my cars.' He goes, I'm going to start building resto mods. And, you know, so to give you an example, he built a 63 split window resto mod that is exactly what you said. It looks exactly the way it did from the factory, except it has modern wheels on it from a modern Corvette. But it had side exhaust, black, red interior, no mods to the body that you could tell. Um, full chassis, LT4 motor, you know, red Italian leather, paddle shift. Took a car to Barrett Jackson brought$407,000. Holy cow. He built another one uh last year. Yeah, I think it brought$245,000,$255. He built a um 67 convertible. Uh he built another 67 I was trying to sell for him. It went to Barrett Jackson. That was the first one he did, and it was blue. It was beautiful. And uh it brought, I think it brought 265 at Barrett Jackson. And it's cool because literally you can get in it and drive it every day to work. I mean, it basically what it is GM now offers these plug-and-play motor sets where you buy the motor transmission computer, it all just bolts in, Bluetooth, Apple Play. You know, he has a push button that opens the hood, closes the hood. Wow, very cool. And you know, so we've seen this trend now, we've been talking about this. And this is why we're building this, uh we're building a 55 Bel Air convertible Resto mod. Originally it was uh a perfect car. We took it apart to do better restoration on it. It was a long time ago. Now the money's not there. Okay, we're like, well, if we put this car back together, the money's not there for it. Okay, so we had a chance to buy a chassis that was already built. It's a Resto Mod chassis, it's got all C4 Corvette suspension in it, it'll run an LT, uh it'll run an LT4 powertrain through it, and we'll put the body back on that. Whereas then we would have a car, and I say this, but I sold a car in January that broke the market for 55 Bel Air, it's a whole different story. But but you know, I can find you a really good Bel Air convertible for you know probably sixty-five, seventy thousand. But if we sell it as a resto, if we build a resto mod, we'll get 135,000, 45,000 out of it. So the money's just not there to do it.

SPEAKER_02:

You know, obviously with social media, um, Facebook Marketplace, classiccars.com, bring a trailer, all the all these ways that people can find cars. Would you ever buy a car without laying eyes on it?

SPEAKER_01:

I did it once. I learned a lesson on that. It was a car out in New York, um, out of a dealer. Dealer. And I asked them a lot of questions and they answered in the best they could. Um I lucked out when the car came because it was actually a lot more original than I had thought. And I don't get me wrong, uh, by the time I bought it, straightened it out, and sold it, sold it later, I made about$32,000 off it. So it was an I'd never lied, and I never went and touched it. But no, any anymore. Um actually my friend that had the Chevelle, I sent him to go look at a car yesterday because the pictures looked great, description looked great, and he called me after being there about an hour and fifteen minutes. It had frame repair in it and some other stuff, which from the photos and the description. Never know. You would have never known. But yes, no. And and there's people like I do it, I have a good friend in New Jersey. I sold, I was on Barrett Jackson, or I mean I was on Meekham in in January. I sold I helped him buy he had 49 cars in his well, he actually had 55 cars in his collection, 49 of them. We took the Meekham in Kissimmee. But I bought all of the Corvettes for his collection, 53 through 67. And they had to be perfect. Perfect judged cars. So he flew me all over to go look at these cars because we wouldn't buy anything that we didn't see.

SPEAKER_02:

He said they had to be perfect judged cars. That was his requirement.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, perfect judge cars, oddball they ought to be oddball colors. They all the fuel injection years had to be fuel injection years. And I sold him a car at the time I met him. I sold him a perfect uh Triple Crown 57 Corvette fuel injected car. And I met him on that car and talked to him about it, tried to convince him not to buy it because he wasn't mechanically inclined and it was a fuel injected car. And we became really close friends and we're still friends to this day. And after all these years, he'd he collected a lot of things. He had a he had DeLorean's DeLorean. He had DeLorean's personal DeLorean with the check signed that he bought it with. Wow. Um I was on TV driving his 57 Go Wing Benz across the block at one point of my dream cars. Yeah, that was a$1.4 million. Um he had a Silver Enzo Ferrari, which there was only only nine silver Enzos and f only four in the United States, and his was one of them. So he he's he's a really good, good friend of mine. I love him to death. And uh but he would just say I would find cars or he'd find cars and I'd ask for photos, and he used to hate it because I told him if I can find five things in a photo that are wrong, that means that there's a hundred things wrong with it. I go see it in person. I'm not flying to California. Great advice. You know, I'm not going to California.

SPEAKER_02:

So you mentioned a dealer, I think you said in New York. So there are consignment shops out there. There's Gateway Classics and G.R. Auto Gallery up in Michigan, Classic Auto Mall over in Pennsylvania. They take really good pictures. But my advice would be don't ever buy a car from those sight on scene. If you want to go look at the car, great.

SPEAKER_01:

The big problem with those guys, you have to read the description. I'm like I say it out loud because I want to get in trouble, but there's a dealer that's out there that sells they have a lot of locations. They s they advertise on social media, they're on Facebook Marketplace, they have their own website. But if you read the descriptions, they're so weasel worded. Like you you You can tell. It'll say like it'll tell you all all the things about the car, but they'll never say that it's a matching numbers car, or it's this, but they'll never tell you it's an original car. They'll never you know it's just the wording. I don't you you have to read between the lines. The pictures are one thing, the description's one thing, but in the best thing I can tell people is the read. There's uh if you're in the Camaros, um McNeish writes a book about uh about Camaros. Go buy it, read it, understand it. Like there's a difference between a cowl hood and regular hoods, hood lad or hood springs, the the hinges. One has the cowl hood has two extra coils in the spring. Unless you read stuff like this. Chevelles, if it's a true SS car, has a hole next to the brake master cylinder for the line to come in for the cowl hood if it's a true functional cow hood. There's all kinds of these little details. And Jerry McNeish writes this book. There's a Corvette book, volume one and volume two by Nolan Adams. It's the Bible. Go read before you buy anything. And if you don't have the time and you don't want to do that, hire somebody. Hire somebody that understands them.

SPEAKER_02:

One of the questions I was gonna ask is what should buyers look at? But one of the things you said earlier, you tried to talk someone out of buying a car because they weren't mechanically inclined, and the Corvette was fuel injected, which are new notoriously finicky. Um So, you know, I I guess it would seem like the advice to someone, a buyer, a potential buyer, is what do you what do you want this thing for? What are you gonna do with it? Are you gonna drag drag it? Are you driving it around town? Are you just going to you know, taking your wife out to dinner and home? Um, are you going on long distance trips? Do you have a trailer? You know, how handy are you? Can you fix brakes? Could you replace a a carburetor, you know, those kinds of things? Because it that would kind of steer someone, not necessarily to the brand of car, but whether it's a resto mod or not, or you know, the state of affairs of that particular vehicle.

SPEAKER_01:

Everything's like that. You you you need to know what you want to do with it. Is it an investment quality car, you know, that you want to buy? I tell a lot of people a lot of these cars are like 401ks that you can enjoy. Okay. Very rarely do I see any of the cars like high-end. If you buy a high-end correct car, it's not gonna lose value, okay? Unless you hold on to it for 25 years. If you buy and enjoy it for five or six, ten years, you're probably fine. Do you want a car to drive like I want to drive it to work a couple days a week in the good months? You know, then you need to look at certain things. Do you care whether it's got a right motor in it or not? You just want it to come because it looks cool and it sounds cool and you want to drive it. And that's all up to the buyer. And the key to the buyer is the buyer has to have that understanding in their head first. That's number one. Number two, make sure that whatever that idea you have of what you want, that you pay the appropriate price. If you want a 69 Camaro that looks like a Z28 and you want it just to be a Z28 that's cool, don't pay a real Z28 price for it. And that's what I have a lot of problems with these dealers. A lot of these cars are fakes, what they call clones, clones, whatever. But they're asking the same price is you know not too far off of the real price. Now it's a little different. Like they made Copo Camaros in 69. You know, real Cope Camaros around 200K. You can find a clone for around 75. Okay, I understand that. That's fair. The weird thing about 69 Camaros is it was the most highly produced year there was because they produced 69s in the 70. So but the price on them, if you want one, you just gotta understand what you want and what you want to spend. I don't care whether it's a I mean, I we've I've dealt a lot with Ferrari as well. Yeah, I don't care if it's a Ferrari or what it is. It just has to be, I don't care what you want it for, but don't pay a stupid price for something and don't fall in love with a car. That's the key. That's the other thing is I see people who go see these cars. I have a kid that I'm gonna do a job for over the winter. They fell in love with a car, didn't pay a lot of attention to it, paid a decent price, but there's it needs a frame. No, don't get emotionally attached. That's why it's better to send somebody sometimes because they'll give you an honest opinion. You would go there and be like, ooh, I want that. You may overlook 55 other things that are gonna cost you a fortune just because you're in love with it.

SPEAKER_02:

That's great advice. So um Barrett Jackson, you were when you were talking about Barrett Jackson, you're throwing out numbers like 150,000, 200,000, 300,000, 400,000. For me, there's this perception that if I were a seller, Barrett Jackson is probably gonna bring premium prices. I I don't know, it's just a perception, could be wrong. Uh maybe Meekham isn't quite as quite as much. I'll be curious to hear your answer on this. Does the auction favor the buyer or the seller? We did a we did a a podcast episode pretty early on last year where I talked about the the hormonal response. To an auction. And you said don't get attached. And there's this Nova show called Mind Over Money, where they take like these graduate students and they put them in a classroom and they're bidding at auction for a$20 bill. And the$20 bill goes for$26 or$27. And so it would seem, you know, if I were selling, I'd fear certainly I could set a set a um reserve if I wanted, you know, to get a certain amount, but I would fear that I'd be giving a car away. But if I'm the buyer, it would seem like some of these cars are going for well above what they're really worth. Could you address that?

SPEAKER_01:

There's a whole PhD study in the auction. You know, I've spent a lot of time in the auctions when when we this is how I started selling cars. My partner at the time was dedicated to Meekum. And I told him one time, because I knew how much he was paying in fees. I'm like, we had a 57 Bel Air convertible and it was Admiral Blue with blue top and Admiral Blue interior. It was a 34-option car. And I remember he was taking to Meekham. I said, Why don't you give me a chance to sell that car? I'll tell you what, I'll sell it for you, and I'll only take 3% of whatever you make. Because at that time, Meekham was charging eight. And my offer was$25,000 better than what he made at the auction. And then after that, I started selling cars for him. But we went back to the auctions because we needed to sell cars a lot of cars fast, both in Kissimmee this year and in me and in Indy. And what I've seen is depending the auction will, depending on the auctioneer, will always favor the auctioneer, not the buyer or the seller. So they'll say, We we we'll cut the ju what we refer to as the juice. We'll cut the juice on the seller side. They'll come over to you and say, drop the reserve and we won't charge you the juice. Because they'll know that now this guy's gonna pay more money because traditionally once the reserve drops, the auction takes off better. So it'll go up some. And so they're gonna make their money off of them. And then the other thing is it depends on when your car goes across the block. And then what day, what time of day your car can go across the block on a Thursday and nobody'll bid on it. It can go across the block at five o'clock on Saturday. Everybody's bid everybody's bidden on it. So there's and then people don't realize about the auction deal is you have to pay to to be a bidder, so you pay a fee. And then if you're a seller, you pay an entry fee. You have to pay for transport to get your car there. You have to pay, if you go there, you have to pay for food, room, and board while you're there. You take the chance of some damage happening to your car during transport. And the and at Barrett Jackson, because we've dealt with them, is depending on what time of day it goes through and what day it goes through, there's a premium. Then there's a premium as to where it parks in the tent. Okay, there's a tent right next to the auction floor. That's high price. You want to park your car twelve tenth down away from the auction floor, it's cheaper. You want to go across at 8 o'clock on a Saturday night, that's premium because then you're on TV. So there's all these factors that go into there. And those guys make a boatload of money. But the other thing people don't realize when they go to the auction is they you have to be careful because they all airbid. You will see this on television when you see the auctioneer point to the crowd, but the camera never goes out there. There is no one out in that crowd bidding. That is them just calling a number to see if they can run the price up on you. The auctioneer? The auctioneer will will point, he'll they'll say, you know, they'll call the next bid 50,000, and then somebody will be like, whoop, and but the camera will not pan out to the crowd. And when they don't pan out to the crowd, there's there's a good chance that there is nobody actually bidding on that car. And I saw it, we saw it happen on one of the cars we sold uh at Indy back in 2010. We sold uh a race car that's in a museum in Florida, it's a 66 Corvette race car. My partner asked me, he's like, Who's bidding on it? I'm like, I got no idea. There's nobody out there except this one guy. There was one guy in the front row bidding. He would bid and then they would point and bob, who's bidding? I'm like, nobody. So I mean, see, but then I've also said That was in your favor. Yeah, it was in our favor. But they also came to us, and because we had a higher reserve on it at the time, they told us they asked us to drop the reserve. So we did, but at the same time, they were air bidding him up to get the price up.

SPEAKER_02:

We've talked a lot about muscle cars, you know, the 50s, 60s, 70s. I think we got into the 80s and 90s, but there are some folks that want late model, maybe 2024 Lamborghinis or McLaren's or Ferraris. And it seems to me that those cars, they hold their value pretty well. You you mentioned something earlier from an investment standpoint and recouping your investment standpoint. You know, if you're gonna hold a car for only five years, if you have a good quality car, if you bought it right the first time, you're probably gonna be okay. It seems like these late model exotics are the same, kind of the same deal. They hold their value pretty well. You could buy, say, a Lamborghini Ferrari, and then when you trade it in a year or two later, you're basically getting the purchase price back minus the payments that you made. I mean, it's it hasn't depreciated a lot. Has that been your experience? Aaron Ross Powell It depends on which model.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. A lot of articles that you read about this type of thing are people that are on the uh special client list. And what does that mean? Ferrari has a program like a lot of the supercars that you see that they have or that you see in magazines and stuff, or the top-end cars, uh SF9s, stuff like you know, not up to date on the more modern, the newer models, but any of the stuff that you see like there, you have to buy so many of the lower grade Ferraris first before you can get on the list to be asked to buy one of those. So just because you want one doesn't mean they'll sell you one. That's first off. Interesting. So you have to be, you know, you gotta buy a bunch of dogs that and then then they'll sell you one. And then, yeah, those cars will hold their value. Those cars, they'll sell you one. You can drive it a year, take it back, they'll give you what you paid for it, you know, or more, depending on what their clients are. And then they have a weird if uh my understanding is they have a weird thing about you can't sell a car for like a year. Like if you buy one of the special cars, right? They don't want you flipping it.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, because I was gonna say or ask you if you haven't made the list, but you want that car and you're uh, you know, you just started a tech company, you're worth a billion dollars, you want that car. You could buy a two-year-old one in the on the on the open market. You're not buying it directly from Ferrari or Lamborghini.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, there's a good chance you're not buying it that way. Uh I mean, they're if you're I mean, I'm in the watch world too. If you're in the Rolexes and stuff, I mean they're the same way. You can't get certain Rolexes unless you've bought, you know, you're on the list. It's not like you can't go in a jewelry store and say, Oh, you know, I want this. They'll be like, good luck. They don't care. And a lot of them don't care how much money you have, but Ferrari and those guys are uh Ferrari especially keeps their client list tight on purpose and and does this type of stuff. And the newer Ferraris, I mean, I've seen them, I have a friend that's had a few, and I've been over there and driven them. I mean, they're okay cars, but they're not Enzo. Um, I used to deal with a guy in Westerville that was a third-party Ferrari mechanic. We owned a few Ferraris we bought and sold. And uh I was over there, and you know, when you look at old Ferrari, like in the 70s, 60s, 70s, I mean, those cars were I mean, they were this basically tin can race cars. You know, they weren't there were no creature comforts to them. They were race cars. And Enzo's luxury cars. Yeah, Enzo sold those cars to make money for the race team. Yeah, that's that's what that was the purpose was to sell cars so you could make money for the race car team. And uh and the new cars are, you know, all kinds of bells and whistles and you know, stuff like that. Um, you know, it's like Porsche. You know, you want to buy a Porsche, you know, GT3 RS, it's not not everybody can go in and order one. You're gonna be on the list. So you have to watch that kind of a market.

SPEAKER_02:

Hector, I'm sure our listeners are green with envy. It's times like these. I wish we had video on our podcast so you could drool over all these cool rides. I'm Andy Keeler, and this is Financial Opportunities Uncovered, brought to you by Keeler and now they're Family Wealth. We thank you for listening. And if you have any questions on anything you heard in this episode or have an idea for a future episode, connect with us on LinkedIn or shoot me an email at Andy.keeler at knwealth.com.

SPEAKER_00:

The opinions expressed in this program are for general information purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations. It is only intended to provide education about finance, tax, retirement, and related planning topics. To determine which investment strategies are appropriate for you, consult your finance, tax, or legal advisor prior to implementing. Any past performance discussed during this program is no guarantee of future results. Any indices referenced for comparison are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. As always, please remember investing involves risk and possible loss of principal. Please seek advice from a licensed professional. Keeler and Adler Family Wealth is a registered investment advisor. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Keeler and Adler Family Wealth and its representatives are property licensed or exempt from licensure. No advice may be rendered by Keeler and Adler Family Wealth unless a client service agreement is in place.