Bad News

Well... The appraisal for the Spokane car ended up being $8500, which meant a loan was out of the question. I also knew the seller would not lower his price much, if at all from the $15K he was asking. Sure enough, I called the seller and he understood if I didn't want to buy at 15 but he was not going to drop his price. He thought the appraiser was "dreaming". I think I know who is dreaming and it's probably not the professional appraiser. To be fair, real selling prices are very subjective and I could see him getting far more than the appraised value. I just can't sell it to the bank very well. So... need to disengage myself from that car now...

Meanwhile back on eBay, there is a car at the St. Louis car museum I had looked at before. It's very similar to the Spokane car but the colors are reversed.

BIN is around $22K so, while more than intended, it's not out of the question. I quickly contacted the seller and asked for contact information to give to an appraiser and emailed the one from I-VAN in the area. The inspection is scheduled for Wednesday. Nothing much for me to do until then. The seller did call me later, perhaps as much to verify my number as to tell me about the little "stain" I could see on the speaker grille. He said the radio and clock do not work and the gold plating on the letters over the speaker have the gold flaking off. He assured me it was good mechanically.

There really aren't that many of these out there in the body and style I want. I started out thinking I would buy a cheapie Chieftain sedan and quickly found out that, for the money, the only way to really go is the two door hard top. And those are the ones everyone else wants too so they are expensive and hard to find.