Part time traders - what cars do you go for?

[ben-ju56e]

I'm sure people get bored of reading these posts but anyway:

I've dabbled buying and selling for years

Back in the early - mid 2000's I had relative success with corsa's and believe it or not fiat cinquecento's.

Recently I have gravitated to mini's although I bought a nice RX8(faultless) but struggled to sell it. It took an age but I did profit in the end.
I try to sell in the sub £2k range.
Yesterday I bought another mini but I was tempted on a C1 but I'm unsure if there is a market for them!?

Just interested to see what success (or not) others have had
Thanks

[kuro]

I bought a couple of eunos mk1s late last year. Cleaned them up a bit and sold the hard top from one of them to pay for a few things that needed sorting. Pretty sure I'll turn a small profit on them when they go up for sale in spring.

[ben-ju56e]

Where did you source them? I see the price with those vary massively. How much will you be flogging them for?

[Andy-gozd1]

Look for anything thats clean,Decent service history,No warning lights on the dashboard.Always check previous mot's to make sure there are no potentially serious advisories on the last one,also anything a bit out of the ordinary as anything mainstream seems to attract a premium price at my local auction.Best results i've had in the past year have been an 03 reg Cooper S,06 plate Seat Altea 1.6 and strangely a 07 plate Vectra which i bought purely on condition.Although i was lucky that both the Seat and Vectra both sold to the first person to show an interest.

[kuro]

ben-ju56e said:

Where did you source them? I see the price with those vary massively. How much will you be flogging them for?

Sourced locally. One is pretty rare s-ltd with no rust and the other a v-spec which had minimal rust sorted by the seller. Not sure what I'll put them up for. The s-ltd wasn't that cheap to start with. If I can't sell it at a profit I'll just keep it.

[caelite]

I kept an eye on local facebook selling pages, went for small stuff (Corsa's, Fiesta's normally, went for Astra/Focus sized stuff when opportunity came up, avoided premium brands like the plague) 10-15 years old. People practically gave them away for £200-300 in ratty condition. I chuck a service on then, clean them up and chuck them on gumtree for £600-900. Never failed to sell.

Although I will admit to being young and stupid and doing it all extremely crookedly (selling them as private with no comeback, not declaring anything etc etc). I genuinely don't see any money in it if you do everything by the book and above board.

[ben-ju56e]

I go down the auction route. I've seen that the market is a wash with zafira's, meriva's and alike. I'm debating wether to take a punt on one.
I've seen an 07 zafira, 5 services stamps, 6 months MOT with 7 seats that I might have a bid on!
Just don't want my money sat in it forever!

Edited by ben-ju56e on Saturday 11th February 21:57

[andymc]

its the like of you lot that ruin it for people who do it for a living, no warranty and no tax to pay

[buyer&seller]

Andy-gozd1 said:

Look for anything thats clean,Decent service history,No warning lights on the dashboard.Always check previous mot's to make sure there are no potentially serious advisories on the last one,also anything a bit out of the ordinary as anything mainstream seems to attract a premium price at my local auction.Best results i've had in the past year have been an 03 reg Cooper S,06 plate Seat Altea 1.6 and strangely a 07 plate Vectra which i bought purely on condition.Although i was lucky that both the Seat and Vectra both sold to the first person to show an interest.

Did you declare the profit on your tax return and pay up accordingly?

[Andy-gozd1]

[quote=buyer&seller]

Did you declare the profit on your tax return and pay up accordingly?

[/quote]
Thanks for your concern,yes i did.
Trying to do it all above board,and not taking any short cuts.
I trade from my home address as i've got nothing to hide.

[Josho]

Zafiras don't sell well.

[JimmyConwayNW]

Josho said:

Zafiras don't sell well.

The unrequested thermal incidents don't help with Zafiras.



Part time traders -trader when it comes to getting more money for the sale - part time when it comes to fixing it and looking after customers.