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Willowbilly3

A *real* tin magnet
Joined
Dec 10, 2007
Messages
7,847
Location
Black Hills South Dakota
I just got word that Jim's Auto Salvage outside of Sturgis is aggressively crushing. I've hauled quite a bit of scrap to him and have been around his yard, lots of 50s and 60s stuff, muscle cars, panels, a whole row of 59 Elcamino's. Part of his lot was on another man's property and they got sideways with each other I guess. Jim always has been kind of a jerk and high priced. Anyways, my buddy scored a pretty decent 60 Starliner for $1500 but I haven't seen it yet. I guess he had a whole row of 66-71 Fairlanes and Torinoes lined up to crush today.
 
What's wrong with all these people?!?!?! Why crush em? Put them up on Craigslist and people will pour in to get them!!! I would gladly pay over scrap for a good project car!
 
It's also about advertising them for sale and having to put up with all the low balling idiots and stupid questions and wasting a lot of time for nothing.
Scrapping for a lot of these Guys is a last resort.
 
EnglishBob said:
It's also about advertising them for sale and having to put up with all the low balling idiots and stupid questions and wasting a lot of time for nothing.
Scrapping for a lot of these Guys is a last resort.
Click to expand...

BINGO!!
Everyone in the area knows he has the cars, the junkyard is open regular hours. I'm sure he would have sold a lot more stuff over the years if his prices weren't too high and that he wasn't such an A-hole.
A lot of the stuff needed crushed.
 
Neverdone said:
What's wrong with all these people?!?!?! Why crush em? Put them up on Craigslist and people will pour in to get them!!! I would gladly pay over scrap for a good project car!
Click to expand...

I find Craigslist can be very frustrating to sell on. Im not sure how all the weirdos find my ads.
 
Yeah you'd have to hire a guy just to manage all the ads and see all the idiots. I think you'd still make alot more money than crushing but alot more work too.

Every time I put up a CL ad I brace myself. Put on the helmet and dig in, b/c they're coming!!
 
Wrecking yards don't care about cars and neither do scrappers. They're in it for the money. A car is a car is a car to them and it doesn't matter if its an al original 1923 or a 2003. It's all metal/parts to them. The trick is to find one that isn't in it for the money. The old "junk yard guy" who would rather take the time to sell a cars parts than to just junk it as soon as he gets it.
 
Well, in defense of the scrap yard, this guy has maybe 500-700 cars. Lots of the old ones have been there a long time. One day I was there and the minions were cramming a 60 Merc 2 door hardtop full of crap so it could get crushed. It had a perfect grille. I asked the owner if he was crushing that grille, it's worth a fair bit of $$. He said the car had been there 20 years and never sold one part off it. So how long should the guy keep it? Another 20 years?
 
Years ago a friend and I discovered a car-less junkyard. The very old guy had gotten rid of all the cars and sold the land to an implement dealer. He had a large cement block building on the property and in it was floor to ceiling shelves filled with gauges, door handles and other small parts from the 20's through the 60's.
We bought dozens of pickup loads from him for $20.00 a load and made good money at swap meets.
I told the old guy that we made a lot of money off his parts and that he was selling too cheap to us.
He said no one had come looking for parts for years and he was glad to sell to us so the stuff didn't get thrown away when he died.
Yards like the one Willowbilly lives near need to sell cheap enough to guys like Willowbilly so he can resell on auction sites or at swap meets. Selling the small stuff won't hurt the crushing price and it can benefit rodders and restorers.
Unfortunately, yard owners seem to be an unusual lot and most would never think in this manner.
 
Well Bob, you have to consider the time and work involved in getting all those parts off the cars. If you have to hire another guy just to remove parts tag and sell them, all of a sudden it's not that much profit.

Willowbilly - could tell that guy if he cut his price in half for parts on cars to be crushed, he'd sell every thing off them. ....Probably still wouldn't get it. Some guys just can't see that six fives are more than a twenty.
 
Everyone always says run an add and you will make big bucks. So here is a little story that happened only 2 years ago if that.....
The guy that I got my Flathead and truck cab that I am using for my current project bought the acreage next to him. Used to be a junkyard. In a building on the property was at least 2 dozen complete flatheads on stands. Some rebuuilt. All complete. Plus more nos flathead parts than you can shake a stick at. The junkyard owner kept most all of the flatheads he got his hands on.
The new property owner ran an ad for a while. All low ballers except one guy that bought a Merc Flatty that had a rebuild tag on it. When the guy bought it the property owner gave him all the NOS parts for free because he couldn't bear to scrap them. 2 full size car trailers full of Faltheads went to the scrappers:eek: and all he was asking was the scrap price per motor in the ad.
He was ready to scrap mine and the cab when I got it from him.
He is a car guy too. Just was tired of the idiots and the hassle. Not very computer savy either.
It's enough to make a grown man weep......
Torchie.
 
I hate selling stuff. I had an 94 Suburban I drove for years. Good old 3/4 ton truck. Tried selling for $500 on local computer add. "What colour is it?" was the most common question I got on the phone[S. Eventually I drove it to the local pick and pull and sold it to them just to get rid of it!

Wish I had space to park it back then. I have use for it now!
 
When we get new project cars where do we go for parts? Swap meets, ebay, thepork or here right? Most people aren't going to call a parts yard anymore. Whats the chance of finding a grill for a 55 Chevy in a yard full of 1990s-2000s stuff? Yards cant keep the cars forever when they can get newer cars in that body shops or DIYers will call and gets parts from
 

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