Auction America - Fall 2015 Auburn IN

[Jonny B]

Did any others from the group attend the US Labor Day, Auburn IN Auction America auction? I was there on Saturday (and did get more than a little wet). There were a number of MB cars on offer, including at least 6 (and I think there were more) Pagodas. The results have not been posted on their web site as of this morning, and I  am going to be very curious to see what the outcomes were. The cars were overall rather dodgy. The photos looked good (don't they always) but when looking at the cars in the wild, they left quite a lot to be desired. Not just the details, but issues with body work, pain, engines etc. Kind of scary what is coming through, I guess on the coat tails of the overall run-up in prices. There was one, 111 cabriolet, that was plain scary. I don't think I would have wanted to drive it out the lot for fear of it breaking apart. All I had to do was look down the side of the car, and could see it waving back at me! Another 190 SL, showed all kinds of potential rust issues. There were a couple of 190 SL's that did look reasonably good, I will be curious to see how those did.

[johnk]

I was there and looked at most of the Pagoda's fairly closely. Most looked like sellers trying to put lipstick on a pig. Beauty was paint deep. I wouldn't say any of them were terrible, but they all made me feel pretty good about buying the Pagoda I did last year, with all the advice from this site as to what to look for of course.

I didn't get all of the final bid numbers because I got caught up in the moment myself and bought a 1986 Turbo 911 (not sure yet if that was a wise move or not yet), but RM should be posting the sale prices soon. There was a 280 that showed many signs of non-originality and covered-up rust plus you could not tell if it had 58k miles or 158k miles. It went for over $60 plus the 10% buyers fee, which was much more than I would have paid for it. There was a very-nice one owner that seemed like a steal when it went for $36k, that is until you saw that it was a California coupe despite the supposed original one owner residing in Pennsylvania.

Over-all I would not recommend selling a Pagoda at this auction. It did not seem to attract much attention to our cars at both this and last year's auctions.

What really amazed me was the number of REAL classics (gorgeous Packards, Auburns and Cords) with half-million dollar restorations going for not more that a $100k.

[Jonny B]

Here is the link to Auctions America Auburn Fall 2015 -

http://www.auctionsamerica.com/events/all-lots.cfm?order=price&noreserve=&category=&year=Year+or+Lot+Number&make=Mercedes-Benz&model=Model&SaleCode=AF15&StillforSale=

This is limited to the Benz on offer, but you can search the sale for whatever you might be interested in seeing.