Auctions, shows, events, museums. Seems like everything is cancelled, postponed or closed. It’s for the best, but that doesn’t change the shocking nature of it all.
However, while the stock market seems to be getting worse by the day, I don’t think value sentiment has changed much in the collector car world from where it was at the beginning of the month. The auctions aren’t happening the way they used to, but the ones that recently wrapped still reflected pre-COVID pricing. Further, I don’t hear a massive cry of pain from owners who are scrambling to dump a car over fears of dropping values, and I don’t think that’s just because I’m working from home.
Like I mentioned last week, the crash of 2008 taught us a lot, and one of those things was that even on the worst day of the year on Wall Street, a really great collector car is still a really great collector car.
But this time away from work, events, and auctions is an adjustment. Everything you were planning on doing with your car is likely cancelled for the foreseeable future. So what to do now?
If you bought your car for the right reasons, this time off is less about worry or disappointment and more about working on that car, even if it’s just cleaning and polishing. If you’re finding that kind of stuff isn’t appealing to you, maybe that’s a good sign that it’ll be time to think about selling once the market fires back up. There’s nothing like a little forced reflection time to really figure out why you own what you own.
Last Sunday, I brought the ACC Mustang to my home shop so I could build the Wrenching article for the next issue of ACC. Both of my daughters are home from school with me now, and both of them keep asking to go for rides. So over the next few days, we’ll be working on the Mustang — all of us — and taking it for neighborhood cruises on our quiet sunny afternoons together. Why not have some fun in the midst of all this?
How are you spending your time? Are you worried about the market? Let’s talk about it in the comments below.