Price Guides- Glasses vs Cap

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Wed 12 Dec 2001 23:09
Price Guides- Glasses vs Cap - Steve G
Why is there such a huge variation between Glasses and Caps black book ?
BCA's Auctionview has the following up for auction :

ALFA ROMEO GTV 2.0 16V TS Saloon, SILVER, 2 Doors, Manual Transmission, Petrol, 36870 Miles, Marginal.
T929CNV Registered 31-03-1999 Peterborough
19-12-2001

Cap Valuation :
Retail: £11895
Trade: £10400

Glasses Valuation :
Ret: £13994
Trd: £11746

Basically Black books Retail is equivalent to Glasses trade.
Must be a nightmare if you have to rely on these guides to value P/ex's and stock you are not familar with would be very easy to overvalue a car.
Suppose the best way to make a living would be to buy at Cap and sell at Glass's. A tidy £ 3600 mark-up on the above car.
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Thu 13 Dec 2001 14:28
Re: Price Guides- Glasses vs Cap - Brian M
I used to use the old version of auction-view which had the pricing display which was very useful. Using this I could gauge what I could expect to pay at auction and how much money I would need. Under the "new, improved" version of auctionview I seem to have lost this.

I login as a guest as I am not a dealer. I enquired about subscribing but was given a standard e-mail reply saying "high volumes of requests mean we cannot do this at present"......I also read in the forum that BCA are very unco-operative to the private buyer with regard to subscribing - this is strange seeing as private buyers have an ever increasing market share at auction?
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Thu 13 Dec 2001 14:29
Re: Price Guides- Glasses vs Cap - mike harvey
Common problem with people who do not read the instructions 'How to use the Guide'. Glasses is for single units bought in PX for retail.
CAP (current auction prices) is what is says. Different marketplace totally, different values. Like houses, ask an estate agent what yours would make at auction, and what it would make as a private sale given some marketing. You also need to take into account local market conditions for the car, so a good knowledge of the trade is needed to interpret both. Both books are a month out of date of course, and the car market can move as quickly as the stock market.
Regards, Mike
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Thu 13 Dec 2001 14:44
Re: Price Guides- Glasses vs Cap - mike harvey
Me again. Also, Glasses regularly and frequently survey franchised dealers for used values of their own product, and there are not many sales managers will admit their product is hard to shift and plummeting in value- their used car stocks will plummet in value! Yes, it's spin and hype! I had a manager once who would often add £1000 to what we knew was a reallistic price, and that was 10 years ago.
Mike
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Thu 13 Dec 2001 15:29
Re: Price Guides- Glasses vs Cap - Tony
With both guides,they are just that,guides to prices,there are many factors that go to determine the price/value of a car,my own is usually what can i get for it?and work from there. Mr Cap and Mr Glass dont have to buy or sell the cars in my place.
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Thu 13 Dec 2001 17:27
Re: Price Guides- Glasses vs Cap - Steve G
I dont actually have a subscription to either guides so cannot read the instructions on using them.
I understand your reasons for the basic difference and that they are just guides.
But why such a large difference ?
With useful tools such as the internet surely these guides should be able to attain a retail value which is within a few hundred pounds.
I would accept trade values are more difficult to attain.
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Thu 13 Dec 2001 20:08
Re: Price Guides- Glasses vs Cap - T lucas
Many many variables go into making a price,but anything is only worth what somebody else is prepared to pay for it,not what some nobber writes in a book once a month.
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Fri 14 Dec 2001 10:34
Re: Price Guides- Glasses vs Cap - mike harvey
Steve, I think the opposite is true, a trade price is easy to obtain. You pick up the phone, ring a number of established trade buyers, get the car underwritten/sold, and it is valued /sold within minutes, and accurately. A retail price however, is a different matter. The buying public are fickle, and cars are also optimistically overpriced to allow some room for movement. How much is actually realised at the end of the day is not usually available. HJ usually has a good idea though.
Mike
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Our honest used car pricing is a little bit different to all the others. You can get to our values through make or model - you don’t have to follow a prescribed route. Plus, it’s live, which means we can react to changes in the market quicker than any printed price guide.

Honest Used Car Prices

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