Listed on Bring a Trailer and reported sold – then listed on eBay right afterwards.
by Mike –
This Lamborghini Gallardo was listed on the Bring a Trailer on-line auction and reported sold for $100,000 on Tuesday, November 13 at 2:50pm (see the screen shot below). This seemed like a great price for the buyer at the time.
However, it was relisted on eBay shortly afterwards for a Buy It Now Price of US $109,500.00 (see the screen shot below). The VIN is the same in both the Bring a Trailer and eBay listings, so we know it is the same Lamborghini.
It appears that the seller in both cases is the same dealer. The seller’s phone number is the same in both the Bring a Trailer and eBay postings and the seller’s location is the same in both.
Comment by the seller on Bring a Trailer (note the phone number)
eBay listing – note the phone number
Interesting…I can think of several reasons why this may have happened. Did the dealer buy his own car back or did the winning bidder on Bring a Trailer not complete the purchase?
Let us know what you think in the Comments.
Reminds me of when I owned my GTC/4 decades ago, I conspired with two other GTC/4 owners for all three of us to list our cars for sale in Ferrari Market Letter classifieds, running an ad in each issue upping the price on each of our cars a smidgen each time , in the hopes of getting them from the $70,000 they were then to $100,000. We succeeded a tiny bit but the Daytona (which cost less originally) soared way past us C4 owners. Probably because a few Daytonas were raced, not namby-pamby luxo cars. Anyway, I tried to think of a phrase for this practice, how about “price bumping?”. Now C4s are worth about $400,000 up but alas I no longer own the car so can’t benefit from our early promotional efforts.
If the car sold for $100k then the seller’s fee is $5k. So if the seller was the buyer then he paid $5k for what? He said he lowered his reserve to $105k (first time I ever read a seller stating that on BaT) but why would he need to purchase the car if it never reached the reserve?
I tried to submit a beautiful C2 restomod corvette with an LS2, plus options, on BaT with an $85k reserve. I had invested $95k into it and similarly optioned cars were selling at auctions and eBay for $85k-$110k. BaT replied “would I be willing to reduce my reserve to $55-$60K? I couldn’t believe it! Of course I said “no way”, and I suggested maybe $75k. They were not interested and so I sold it 2 weeks later on eBay for $75k (to a classic cars dealer that had 50 cars in stock). I had another car coming and needed the garage space. My original thought was if the bidding didn’t reach the $85k reserve, I could always elect to lower it. But at a reserve of $60k, if the bidding didn’t get much higher, I would have to buy my car at a 5% fee.
Now I see how BaT selects the cars that they auction.
Its like selling real Estate, the broker has no skin in the game so the lower you can get the reserve the higher your odds are for a sale. Same goes for auctions. Building interest early can also help the sale too. How many sellers have a average car but see a top notch car sell at a high premium and expect their car to sell at the same price? Too many. Bat has a lot of interest so they are going cull out the cars that fit their profile.
Do you think this Lamborghini sold or not?
Buyer backed out, according to seller.
FYI if a guy backs out BAT will often contact the next lower bidder for interest
They did and he declined. Buyer who backed out was banned from bidding on BaT.
OK, but this car is still listed as sold on the BaT site. If it did not really sell why don’t they change the listing? They are reporting this Lamborghini as sold for $100K when it did not really sell for that price.
Here is the link – https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2006-lamborghini-gallardo-2/
To bid on BaT, you are required to provide a valid credit card. According to Bat: “When bidding, we place a hold on your card for 5% of your initial bid amount with a minimum hold of $250 and maximum of $5000. Should you win the auction, that hold will be converted to a charge. If not, the hold will be released immediately at auction end.”
In the case of the buyer who backed out, the initial bid was $60k, so BaT received $3k for no-sale. Not bad.
And the “seller” received what?
Providing he got a refund on a $99 listing fee, the seller got excellent exposure of his car to a target audience. I’d say that’s not a bad deal in itself
Yet, three weeks after the BaT auction ended this car is still for sale.
Mike, to address your last comment, this is not a “must to have” car but a “want to have”. As such, unless it was an outright giveaway, it will take time to find a new owner. If the seller would price it at $99k, I am almost certain this car would be sold by now. Other factors are a) other options at this price point; b) holiday season – people are leaving on vacation, etc.
I bought and sold vehicles on eBay. Percentage wise, eBay resulted in very few direct sales, but there were instances where I would make a deal after the auctions were over because there was a much broader exposure than I could get from local CL listing. I am pretty sure that the seller did not suffer here.
A thought did cross my mind that the buyer may have had the car inspected after the purchase and perhaps something popped up or… To address a point made earlier, BaT will reach out to the second highest bidder but in this case $100k was the magic number there and a difference of roughly $9k plus $450 (buyers fee) was probably a big reach for the runner up.
My experience with BaT was similar to Philip’s although it involved bikes. Both were collectible and rather rare (one was Italian, roughly 260 ever made). At first BaT wanted me to accept a “no reserve” listing, but then came back with proposal to list the bike for the auction as long as I lowered reserve. In both instances I sold the bikes at or close to price points I wanted, which was significantly higher than reserves proposed by BaT.
My final comment on this matter.
The owner told me that he wanted to relist it with BaT, because the backed out, but he had to wait 3 weeks for an opening in their listings. I suspect we will see it soon on BaT.