Who needs Bruce Weiner with ebay items like these.

[Jim Janecek]

I never suggested that Jim.

I never said you did. Chris Thomas made the suggestion.
But I am not going to act on it unless the regular users of the forum want it.

[AndrewG]

It would be interesting to know how much prices are really going up.  I don't mean that they aren't, but you do have to remove inflation from the equation.  Expressing prices as a percentage of a small new car would be interesting*.

Isn't £1,000 the "giving it away for nothing" mark nowadays?

* During decimalisation of British currency (and I think there's a few here old enough to remember that...), my sister then aged under 10 came up with the Mars index, where the price of an object was measured in the number of Mars bars and she found that pre-decimalisation and post-decimalisation Mars-prices were fairly constant.

[Bob Purton]

I never suggested that Jim.

I never said you did. Chris Thomas made the suggestion.
But I am not going to act on it unless the regular users of the forum want it.

I never said you said I did, but just in case someones said you said I said I did , I didnt! 

[Rusty Chrome (Malcolm Parker)]

I find it very difficult to believe that anyone with the nous and sophistication to take the time and effort to look up rare or unusual cars advertised for sale on Ebay that are subsequently mentioned on the Rumcars site would not have the nous and sophistication to find them on Ebay in the first place - you can Ebay to email you everytime the magic word that you're searching for appears for sale on any of their sites, so why bother with the more hit and miss approach of watching the RumCars forum?  On the contrary, I think putting Ebay listings on the Rumcars site has identified a number of fradulent adverts, slightly dodgy cars and clear examples of over-priced vehicles that have hung around on Ebay for months and months. Whether Ebay has any merit as a price guide is a lot less certain, but it can't be any worse than the guides that appear in the Classic car magazines.

[Big Al]

Following up that. When my Messerschmitt was stolen it become expedient to monitor eBay as one potential sales outlet for the car. In the three or four months of doing this the police clicked up 5 notches on the truncheon! This was from three dodgy deals involving Messerschmitts that led to investigation and arrest on that or another matter. I asked the Police about how the then dealt with eBay etc. They had two officers assigned! Part of the problem was clearly that without specialist knowledge or the shear extent of knowledge of the pool of cars they could not pick up the dodgy adverts like an enthusiast would. I therefore suggested to the FBHVC and some clubs that they should advise larger organizations, at least, to nominate an eBay monitor and report all dodgy looking adverts to the Police. As far as I know this has been ignored. Having dealt with my probs through the Police I can tell you they only act if you provide them with good quality ammunition to fire. I got my car back through the classified ads in the end.

So there is a good reason to float ads up on the forum. It is one of the things it is for and the information is in the public domain. Banning it is to effectively ban the forum's ability to function in favour of other sites that will discuss the topics. Pandora's box was opened the minute the Internet was invented, you cannot change that.

The answer to keeping cars in Britain is simple. We have to pay the going rate. What you are experiencing is the real cost of the Banking Crisis on our economy. We are loosing our buying power at an accelerating rate worldwide. That is not political, its a fact. An unpleasant one when you are on the receiving end. Given time we could all be pretty miffed all those Donkeys went into the beefburgers!

[steven mandell]

Just typed in berkeley sa322 and there it was not rocket science . Another one crossing the pond ?

Well excuuuse me for not being a rocket scientist, and having the nerve to want to look at a microcar even though I wasn't born in jolly old England.
All I was doing was politely pointing out an error in the post that prevented the readers from being able to realize the benefit of the intended communication.
May I be allowed to humbly  point put that several of the ensuing rants make the illogical, unsupportable and prejudicial assumption that anyone that lives off shore from your continent that is expressing an interest in viewing cars on EBay cannot be a true enthusiast, and is only in it for the money?  Can they not want it for themselves?
I am a true enthusiast of only average means, who is guilty of the cardinal sin of not being born on your shores.  I have never sold a single microcar, but value my interest highly enough to have taken 4 days out of my life and travelled 3000  miles last week to be part of Microcar history in the making.  Where were your country's true blue, dyed in the wool, holier than thou, and more deserving enthusiasts then?
Now I see myself referred to as a "chum" after pre paying more than $1000 for services in good faith,  providing instant live photos, pictures, telephone calls, and even follow up detective work on who the buyers were for 3 of your non US members when micros that they had a previous interest in crossed the block.  All done out of pure enthusiasm, whilst not being enabled to buy anything due to the high prices at Bruce's auction.
 
If you must have a scapegoat that badly- why not make it Bruce, who has introduced interest in microcars to more people, and saved more of them than anyone else on the planet, or Jim who spent the whole time devoted to getting the live feed working.  After all, they are foreigners that have bought microcars that originated from outside of their country also.
With the relatively high value of the GBP to USD, you have less to complain about than we do in the states, yet we don't crucify the English investors that are so enabled to "steal" our rust free California cars to resell at a profit back on your shores.  Ditto the French for your fellow citizens taking of similar advantage in their country.
 

[richard]

Well !!   you just threw what we call , in the queens english, a tizzy fit 

[richard]

Bruce has saved more than anyone else on the planet - what rubbish I have nothing at all against bruce and have not said a word against him. Has he in fact saved any vehicle that was underthreat ? I may be wrong but I am not sure that he has

[Bob Purton]

Calm down Steven. This is not a new issue to be discussed on the forum. There are two British one make clubs that have a strict rule against exporting the cars, The Bond Owners club, and the Messerschmitt owners club. If you export a Messerschmitt [even though they are German cars] you get expelled from the club, if you export a Bond its certain death or worse still a visit from Stan with the" boys" !   Rum cars isnt a club and hence there are no rules and as you must have read so far some are against, some are for and some are indifferent. You have read others opinions , please respect them as we shall respect yours.

[Jim Janecek]

Has he in fact saved any vehicle that was underthreat ? I may be wrong but I am not sure that he has

While a number of the vehicles in his collection were purchased as-is and never touched, he had a number of complete basket cases that he brought back from just a pile of parts.
The Fuji Cabin is the one that I think of first.  He was offered it for the first collection, but turned it down on the advice of Peter Svilans (I think) that it was just too far gone to be able to be restored. (see attached pic of BEFORE)
Yet....he later acquired it and brought it back.  It is a gorgeous vehicle.
The Kroboth was also nothing but a garbage pile of metal when it began.  I had some reference photos of the ones in the Eingstingen (sp?) Museum that were used to help with the restoration.
I wrote a story for the magazine about his decades long chase for a guy who "collected" several KR200s and Tigers, but lacked storage space so they were all disassembled and stored in various sheds and barns.  Most of those have been brought back from the dead.

I am pretty certain all the Mochets he had were just rusty buckets when he got them. 

From the previous collection, a good number of the cars came from a "collection" in South Florida and they were rotted, but they got complete restorations.

That's all I can think of at the moment.

[richard]

Well you could say he saved the inter. Under it's previous ownership it might have ended up being used off road !! 

[Garybond]

Well it has certainly got everybody talking it is a funny subject cars leaving their native shores or where they were sold as Richard has a left hand drive Bond that I presume was reimported
It has happened for centuries you only have to look at the antique market

[richard]

Agreed. There must be a story to both my lhd cars - I just wish I knew them . Was my bond a factory show model ? Anyway it back in good old blighty by 1951. My bruetsch like all bruetschs , made by herr bruetsch ,was a demonstrator brought here and not sent back to him as he had debts to clear and he didn't .

[Garybond]

Are any of the cars coming to these shores I would have liked to bid but divorce threatened if I brought any more vehicles back home

[Jim Janecek]

Are any of the cars coming to these shores I would have liked to bid but divorce threatened if I brought any more vehicles back home

I'm not aware of any at this time.  I've been doing some cross-referencing of bidder numbers with people I met and stories told, so far everything stays in the States apart from a couple dozen going to Russia.
The Auction company has a list, but they will not release it, so some detective work is necessary to figure out anything.
Some were easy because I met the high bidder and they simply told me what they won. Other times I knew someone got one item so I checked their bidder number against other lots.
Winning bidder numbers were announced at the end of each lot, you had to write it down.