A few years ago I got really ill and I realized the party could be over at any moment, after I died, oh wait, I didn't die, but I realized I didn't want to leave my wife with giant hassle of dealing with a bunch of weird, cars, speed parts, memorabilia etc. I sold most of the cars and parts, then five years later the stuff I had saved was destroyed in the High Park Fire in 2012 sooooo, plan all you want. I'm down to three projects and two are for sale.
One I have not mentioned... 1964 F100 flare side comes with a good 223 and 3.03 3 speed. It's rusty but the bones are good.... has good cab structure. Needs..... everything but it is a builder or parts truck. Free to good home if you are a real HAMBer. It's in the way. I would really like it to go to someone that could do something with it.... like a kid or a person on a budget. Then again I have mixed emotions..... it needs a lot. It's almost like giving someone a disease.
I once sold everything and life was easy. I was miserable. I need a project to think about and dream about. Now I have two dead motorcycles and a dead car. Life Is Good.
It is so easy to hold on to stuff past its expiration date. I had a bunch of left overs that I never got around to selling. E-bay was loaded with them so I took them to a make specific show and swap meet. Everybody was looking for restoration quality and mine was daily driver stuff. Took it to the scrap yard and sold it by the pound.
You, know, it's odd. After many, many years, I have reached the point where I could, within some reason, buy anything I wanted. But, I find I don't want much. I've got my hot rod pretty much completed and my old aunt's '65 Mustang and I can only drive one at a time. I find myself contemplating parting with yards of shelf space worth of HotRod, StreetRodder and CarCraft-I only look at the really old ones and stopped indexing articles 10 years ago. Plus a bunch of other stuff. With two huge barns, you can amass a lot of stuff. I'm not jaded or worn out, I am not parting with my hot rod book collection or my TRJs!. But after a point, if you've got clothes to wear, food to eat, a place to sleep, loved ones and some health-you're already better off than most and truly a rich man. The rest is stuff and I find myself needing to have less stuff.
I need to sell off a bunch stuff and cull the heard around here. I've got far too much "someday" stuff sitting around that will never see a "some day". I'd agree that most anything having it be as complete as possible is a plus. Some guys just flat cannot visualize if something is in pieces. I've been at this for over 50 years and think I attended my first swap meet around 1971 or 2 and every time I see fresh primer on a project I ask myself what it is hiding. I'm not a patina fan by any shake but seeing a project in the untouched lately condition shows what one is up against and shows you aren't hiding anything. "Has great patina" is a total turn of to me though as it tells me the seller thinks rust and sad paint adds value. If it's parts I want them clean enough so that I can handle them without worrying about gettng back in the car with greasy hands. They don't have to be spotless but a guy shouldn't be afraid to handle them. I went out to look at a transmission off Craigslist a while back that ended up being so covered with grease and wet gear oil that you couldn't tell what it was let alone want to handle it. It took 5 minutes with a screw driver to be able to read the casting number on the case and then it didn't match what the seller claimed it was. That's another point, on special parts that bring more money than some pieces have some documentation to back up what you say it is. I'd probably put one project at a time up for sale rather than making it look like I was having a fire sale trying to get rid of several. I'd have the others ready to sell though. The guy who shows up to look at the coupe you have advertised might just decide that the sedan you have back in the corner would be a great project when you tell him the price on it. Good luck what ever you decide.
The Jalopy Journal
