Help pricing my FIL's 90 Olds Custom Cruiser

I'm at my Father In Law's house and he asked me to help him figure out how much to ask for his car. I'm building a web page that I can scrape and post to Craigslist and we'll figure out some other places.

At any rate, he asked his insurance guy to look the car up and they were surprised that it's supposed to be worth $5000 to $7000. The car is crazy clean.

Can folks offer me some feedback on this thing? The page I'm building is here: http://www.patdonahue.com/forsale/90Olds/

The car is near Charleston, WV. He always has a lot of cars and likes to drive beaters when he weather is bad. This one was never his beater but he did haul some boards in it from time to time when he didn't want to drive one of his trucks.

That's a nice car. I think the insurance company's estimate is quite high however. The nice shape it's in though could make it sell real world for $3,000. The 1990 Custom Cruiser is actually the rarest Custom Cruiser, with only somewhere around 3,000 made. However, they're not really collectible cars per se, so there's just not a lot of people out there looking to buy them, which is going to make the real world price much lower unfortunately. What does Kelly Blue Book value it at?

Lynol wrote:

That's a nice car. I think the insurance company's estimate is quite high however. The nice shape it's in though could make it sell real world for $3,000. The 1990 Custom Cruiser is actually the rarest Custom Cruiser, with only somewhere around 3,000 made. However, they're not really collectible cars per se, so there's just not a lot of people out there looking to buy them, which is going to make the real world price much lower unfortunately. What does Kelly Blue Book value it at?

As far as I know the insurance guy looked it up in the Blue Book to get that value. Is that what insurance typically uses when they value cars they insure?

I forgot about another point. My FIL remembers the engine as a 307 but is that right? Could it be a 305? He does lament the lack of power when he rides in my '96 Roady wagon.

FWIW....I paid about that for my '95 Caprice wagon with 37k on the odometer. Nice car, though.

The 91 thru 96 wagons are the most popular simply because they are much better looking.First thing to do is wash the dirty area around the tailgate.Everyone who knows wagons looks therefor signs of rust.These cars can be as beautiful as yours is and still be pretty badly rusted underneath,so post some quality pics of the suspension and frame.To bring top money,it seems that ebay is the way to go as craigslist is free and requires nextto no effort to post there.I have a 91 OCC with 71000 miles on it and is a 1 owner car.I can wish too but I dont think I would get anywhere near that value if I sold it and mine is the muchmore desirable bodystyle.
Best of luck and you should buy it as a companion for your 96.
Jim

It has a 307. With the mileage, I think you will be luck to get anything close to $3000. $1000-$2000 would be realistic. There is not a chance that blue book value is 5-7k.

For $1200, I'll fly down there and drive it home to NH!

That being said, I'm with Jay. I think about $1500 is all he could realistically expect out of that car. Sure it's in great shape and is fairly rare. But there is no real demand for it, and it has pretty high mileage.

But I'd rock the chit out of that car.

Kelly Blue Book, and NADA prices are notoriously high, so the insurance co. is probably close on the appraisal as crazy as it sounds. Unfortunately no one in there right mind will pay close to that kind of money.

I would think $3,000 is tops for that car if you find the right buyer. As Jim said Ebay is a must for top dollar, and take a lot of pics, up, down, in, and out. Good luck.

Sweet wheels by the way. And for the record, I'd buy a nice wood delete Olds box wagon with a 307 over a similar '91-'93 TBI wagon, I think they were better built and both need more motor so a swap would be necessary either way.

NADA price.

http://www.nadaguides.com/Classic-Cars/1990/Oldsmobile/Custom-Cruiser/4-Door-Station-wagon/Values

Mike

5-7k is overly optimistic (i.e. not gonna happen unless you're in an auction environment with 2 guys who love wagons with more money than sense.)
real world, you could pull 2500 tops if you found the right person who really wanted that particular wagon in that particular color, options, etc. IMO the mileage is higher than most people want (even though olds powered wagons are good for about 300k). I'd ask 2700 and see where it goes from there.
I will say it looks clean as a whistle up top (curious what the underside looks like)

Nice clean looking car, from the pictures; but it has high mileage. $1200 to $1500.

Tom C.

2,000 - 3,000 should be doable, maybe $4,000 if you have a lot of patience. It looks like a very clean and well maintained example, and that is worth a lot to some people. But you might end up sitting on it for 6-12 months before the right person buys it.

Flasheroo wrote:

The 91 thru 96 wagons are the most popular simply because they are much better looking.First thing to do is wash the dirty area around the tailgate.Everyone who knows wagons looks therefor signs of rust.These cars can be as beautiful as yours is and still be pretty badly rusted underneath,so post some quality pics of the suspension and frame.To bring top money,it seems that ebay is the way to go as craigslist is free and requires nextto no effort to post there.I have a 91 OCC with 71000 miles on it and is a 1 owner car.I can wish too but I dont think I would get anywhere near that value if I sold it and mine is the muchmore desirable bodystyle.
Best of luck and you should buy it as a companion for your 96.
Jim

Thanks to everybody for the feedback. I'll try to ratchet him back towards earth on this. They did talk some about $3000 before they got that estimate.

Yeah, I'll get more pics when I can. They did mention that when it's parked outside it leaks in the back window some. I need to look at the floor in the very back.

Probably we'll have them drive it to my house timed to cruise Pigeon Forge during a car show. I'd think a small for sale sign in the window will get buyers to take a look in person. Of course that leaves one more garage full until then. They have 9 cars garaged, 3 cars under carports, and one sitting out. Not counting tractors and other four wheelers.

Well, we're starting to talk about the price now while I type this. Interestingly he's ridden in my car and loves the power but doesn't like the rounded body style as much as his squared off wagon.