by Mike Gulett –
The Sports Car Market Pocket Price Guide has a new Editor-in-Chief (Jeff Sabatini) and a new methodology for presenting the data for car prices.
This year they are showing actual price ranges from low to high for transactions over the previous three years. The previous guide showed the median prices. This new methodology provides more data but the devil is in the details.
It does not take into account the condition of each car that set the high or the low price and we know this can be a large range but only based on what cars actually sold in the time frame used. There could be better, or worse, condition cars that did not come up for sale.
There are also some models where they lump all the model variations into one number, which could distort the value. Examples of this are:
* Iso Grifo where the 7-Liter model commands a premium over the small block model as does a Targa version and if they include the A3/C in this number then that distorts the result even more.
* 1965 Shelby GT350 where the racing version (R) will sell for much more than the street version.
I value the Sports Car Market Price Guide not just because of the price results but because of the other valuable information they provide for each of the collector car models they list. Such as: the number made of each model, the years of each model, their opinion on investment grade ranking of A, B, C, D or F and the percent change.
Below I compare the Sports Car Market Pocket Price Guide published prices, from 2019 through the new 2023 price guide, for some of my favorite cars with the percent change from ’22 to ’23.
Click on the image below for a larger view of my Sports Car Market Pocket Price Guide comparison.
There is a large increase in prices for the models on my list. This can be attributed to a real increase in market values plus a change in methodology where the number I used for 2023 is the high price. I think it is a little of both.
If you are like me you will go to cars of interest in this guide either because you have one, did have one in the past, or want one in the future and compare your experience or expectations with the guide. For example I noticed the high price for a Lamborghini Espada is $177,000 yet I know an Espada sold on Bring a Trailer in October 2021 for $215,000 (well within the three year window for this guide, which should have resulted in the Espada high price being $215,000). I also sold my Espada on BaT in May 2022 for $172,000, thus my interest.
I noticed that they still do not include the AC Cobra Mk IV, which I have mentioned here before but still hold out hope for its inclusion in the future because they eventually did add the Apollo GT after years of my reminding them of this oversight.
What do you think? Is this an accurate representation of market prices? And is it a useful guide?
Let us know what you think in the Comments.
AC Cobra Mk IV
I see that Grifo’s are bringing almost Daytona money as they should IMO as they are better. People are finally STARTING to get it. A good friend of mine used to have an all original Grifo with only 70k miles on it. I would assume an all original car would bring over the high value of 585k if it was in good shape.
I don’t see this trend of escalating prices slowing in the coming years the way money creating and debt continues to exponentially head higher. Great place to park your money, pardon the pun.
As far as adding the Mk. IV to their price watch guide I think it deserves to be on the list
because it was built in the AC factory by many of the same craftsmen.
Though Shelby fought it all the way since he was not getting a dime from it.
I think the AC Owners Club in UK has done a good job of recording which ones were built by SN but the record keeping on Cobra replicas gets pretty messy when you start allowing in all the dozens of other brands, so I documentation is the key to acceptability. If there are good rosters, with all the facts checked out, for an entire run, a car should be considered. How is Interrneccanica treated in that book? I think Intermeccanica is a firm worth recognizing though later on they went into many replicas like Speedsters so they went from being a real automaker making their own brand to making copies of other vehicles. Like to me a gourmet chef going to work at MacDonalds….Monteverdi also went from making its own designs to just customizing some 4WD SUVs and lost my respect
I represented Keith Martin’s Sports Car Market Magazine for 16 years, and the annual Pocket Price Guide. I know full well the challenges of capturing the information that goes into its pages, and the continual effort to keep that information accurate. At one point, we started upgrading the content multiple times per year to keep up with the ever-changing market, which is no small fete. I’ve got the entire collection, and it’s fun to look at Guides from a few decades ago and see what a bargain some of the various marques were (And we were whining about being too expensive at the time). By the way, Keith puts the digital version of everything he’s printed on his website for his subscribers to access and you can look at old editions as I do.
The reason the cars on your list have increased so much is that you have great taste in automobiles. As you know, I’m an Iso Grifo/Bizzarrini 5300/Cobra fanatic, and I knew the prices of these particular vehicles were going to be insane right about now. It just goes to prove that our collector car realm truly does beat to its own economic drum, regardless of what is going on in the world around us.