Thanks Tom.
I'll explain a bit further. When you buy a car to restore, there's a certain amount you pay for the car before anything else happens. When you begin to restore your car, there will be all sorts of bills to pay for body work, engine, chrome plating, interior and a number of other items, big and small. Once your car is finished, your exspenses will be mostly basic maintanence so the bills will become much smaller. Everything you bought for your car is hopefully, a one time deal. If you have several cars this might be a constant and often repeated exercise.
Since I buy parts almost every week, and I've been doing this for 35 years, I've noticed certain trends in pricing. In almost every case, when the part in question went '' classic '' the price increased considerably. Every time I order the same part the price is often higher if I can't get it through an OE supplier. King pins, brake parts, and stuff that has lots of applications, generally stays at a fairly low and constant price. Things that only MB has control of is a different story. Reproduction parts have helped out but sometimes the quality isn't there.
Avaliablity of parts through MB is a double edged sword. Yes, it's great to have them and they can often have stupid prices on some things, but it's also kept the aftermarket suppliers out of the mix because they are available. When something suddenly becomes NLA the repro parts won't be there for us. It often becomes a knee jerk reaction to a sudden parts supply problem. Anything that's still out there gets snapped up quickly for far more than what it should cost and then slowly repro parts become available.
Then there been times where some are left holding very exspensive NOS when suddenly a supply of ' lost parts ' are found by Carl Benz at a much lower price. It doesn't happen a lot but it does happen....
It comes down to the golden rule. '' He who has the gold, makes the rules.''
