My buddy has a family member that has a 1932 ford two door sedan body that has been sitting on their place forever. It has been sitting long enough for a large tree to grow up through the middle of it. It would take a little hacking and repatching to pull the car out from around the tree. My question is what is a body like that worth. I have no pics but it is a pretty fair body no serious rusted out spots and no major body damage from what I can tell. I am trying to get a value idea for him to convince him to get out from the tree and find some use in it.
Round up the amount of cash green money that you can honestly give for the body and feel that it is worth. Go out there and ask the guy if he sold it then and there for cash how much money would it take. If the asking price is well below what you have to spend he has a deal then and there. If it is higher you are negotiating from there on out. Hell, he may think it's scrap and worth scrap price at most an then again he may have been watching the last three years of the BJ auctions and think it made of gold. But you don't know until you ask. You might also try to find out what the guy wants or needs at the moment. Cash might not buy it but maybe he needs a new riding lawn mower or a ten horse kicker for his bass boat or something else that you could probably come up with easily. He would probably brag for six months that he managed to trade that rusty old body down in the field for something he needed or wanted. There was a chopped one, with a crappy roof filler job and a nice frame for sale within 125 miles of me for 6K two weeks ago Body, frame and no real running gear but the body was pretty solid. On the other end of the spectrum there was a tudor body at Portland a week ago with a 10K price tag on it that was fairly decent but I didn't see any takers.