This is all rather amusing.
The whole problem of buying a job lot of cars is that you immediately have a problem selling quickly. People will not be able to make up their minds on which car to buy, as none will be prefect. Add in that done through eBay we all know the unit price per car. Its human nature to begrudge a profit, so there is going to be something of a cap on the prices in many people's mind. Environment and storage does make a difference to sales and with poor storage the pressure comes on to clear the cars away by sale.
Against this you have the fact that it was abundantly clear that there was not the interest, or trust related to the risk value, to form a RUMcar ring to buy the cars. As Bob pointed out on another thread, the trade - we are sort of trade as we are the natural buyers of such tosh -, often opt to ring auction lots and share out dibs later. (This does not happen, off course, in the same preportion that Mr Wall does not bid items up). This suggests to me that in fact those interested folk on the forum were expressing interest at a pretty low value. I think Steve M was the only person who put a higher value on the cars. The higher the unit price after the good cars go, the more difficult selling the remaining cars becomes as you will all know what was paid for the lot. Secondary buyer reaction will be, why should I subsidise a primary purchaser's better car buy. Again its human nature.
So these sorts of deals are difficult to assemble and generally rely on a uniformly low valuation by a majority of 'buy now' buyers in the hope that those same individuals do not bid individually. The hope is a 'steamer' does not appear from unknown quarters to outbid the ring. From my and the other bidder in our cluster's point of view, that is what happened. But then we were not greatly bothered to own, or not, as we would be looking at financing and shifting some 8 unwanted cars.
The buyer, now seller, has two advantages.
He can sell the cars off in the quantities the buyers want. These are buyers who did not want 13 cars, but maybe two to make one, or something.
The second thing, if he is smart, is he has time to do what my job would have been in our group. That is to take the best shell, give it the best bits. Second best, the next best bits. In this way the cars become more valuable at the cost of two or three growlers. I do not doubt several buyers would have a growler as a spares resource for their good car.
That improvement process takes time. Ideal time to spread out the resale of the cars he does not want. Its quite a lot of work. But experience has shown that that is the way to do it, if you can. But the proviso is, this really only works well when the purchase price is not known, as people will have already made up there minds on their budget on a 'good' car. My 'good' car, using the above method, will be a lot better than what is likely to be a 'good' car ex works. That is where the margin is, its where I made my money, as I offered what was previously not for sale. A complete and wholesome car, no strings attached.