Sad day when you cannot even give away mopar parts, off to the crap yard.

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I used to repair & restore wood boats & ended up buying & selling parts, having over 2000 parts & 24 engines at one time.
Then had a heart attack & stent & then too many parts.
I made a deal with a friend & brothers that have a boat shop in the east, for all my parts, boats, trailers, lumber, some equipment & much more miscellaneous odds & ends when I moved, too. They supposedly would restore one somewhat rare boat.
Never happened. Original deal 12 yr ago, additional maybe 9 yr ago. 2 yr ago I concluded I will never see any return from all the boats I parted out & cut up, or parts I bought & hauled to shows for almost 10 yrs.
And when I did sell parts at shows, at first people were happy to find & pay my price, by the next year they went rude & said I charged too much, & third year rudeness went to offering so little, I finally took a Ball Peen Hammer to the part & said he could have it for that now!
After that and one reseller sent his teenage son over to get a deal, we stopped taking parts & just went to Florida for fun & then moved here.
At least there's no snow.
 
FB sellers are getting bad as well. It's almost like they don't even want to put in the effort to sell the part. I'll tell a guy that I want to come by Tuesday and buy a part and they'll say they're busy that day. So I say what about the Wednesday and they say they're busy that day as well. They don't even tell you when they're available. They just want you to keep guessing until you land on the exact day and time they want.

I'll give up and move on and then Tuesday rolls around and they message me saying they're available...
 
Mopar603 said:
This. The "boomers and X'ers are dying off or doing something else. I don't care what anyone says, the young guys DO NOT WANT THESE BOOMER CARS. I work with teens every sing day. You talk about cars and their eyes glaze over. Sure, they know McLaren, BMW, Subaru, Lamborghini, etc., but alk about a classics or hot rods and they walk away. Fewer and fewer people are restoring them and more are building street machines using aftermarket parts, making the cars perform and handle better, too. Plus, it's too damn expensive to restore them. Guys selling used Mopar parts are trying to retire off of every part they sell. Its insane what they're asking for old parts. Roadkill has made clapped out or unrestored cars cool, which doesn't help the resto market, either. I truly feel that the hot rod, and automotive hobby in general, is in it Swan song. The remaining Boomers, GenX and some Millenials, and that's it. It's over. Just my opinion by talking with teens.
Click to expand...
A lot of boomers weren't car guys either. So their offspring never were exposed. Or their offspring. Seems way too many have been taught to sit in front of the tv watching NFL NBA, Ad Nauseum & learning to Gamble instead of learning to do anything with their hands.
Boats the same. At a new boat show years ago, a kid about 10 or so looked at my Wood Boat and said "who would want to build out of wood " and his father didn't tell him he was a rude asshole or correct him for it. AT ALL.
So never learning about other things & allowed to be a rude chump or never learning to see the value in what you don't know, has hurt us all & society, too.
And yes older generations did some stupid stuff & have trashed the world, and still are, but if you learn you also learn from their mistakes. And none of that seems to be happening now. Our society has gotten noticeably uninterested in learning & therefore the schools dumbing down has been greeted by a ho-hum attitude, as if their thinking is earlier generations got too much schooling! Lets fix that by dumbing down. Brilliant decisions.
Like we don't need Industrial Arts Classes any more, we just need office workers with College Degrees. That hasn't worked out either. Just stupid.
 
Woody500 said:
A lot of boomers weren't car guys either. So their offspring never were exposed. Or their offspring. Seems way too many have been taught to sit in front of the tv watching NFL NBA, Ad Nauseum & learning to Gamble instead of learning to do anything with their hands.
Boats the same. At a new boat show years ago, a kid about 10 or so looked at my Wood Boat and said "who would want to build out of wood " and his father didn't tell him he was a rude asshole or correct him for it. AT ALL.
So never learning about other things & allowed to be a rude chump or never learning to see the value in what you don't know, has hurt us all & society, too.
And yes older generations did some stupid stuff & have trashed the world, and still are, but if you learn you also learn from their mistakes. And none of that seems to be happening now. Our society has gotten noticeably uninterested in learning & therefore the schools dumbing down has been greeted by a ho-hum attitude, as if their thinking is earlier generations got too much schooling! Lets fix that by dumbing down. Brilliant decisions.
Like we don't need Industrial Arts Classes any more, we just need office workers with College Degrees. That hasn't worked out either. Just stupid.
Click to expand...

This isn't too far from the truth. When I hear "dad's don't teach their kids about cars" from the boomer/genx crowd I have to laugh. Boomers by and large didn't teach their millennial kids (most are now 35-40 years old) and my gen genx didn't do any better. Granted I'm very late genx with elementary age kids so I do my best. The current crop of high school graduates through late 20s are all gen z now and while it's true they have much less interest in cars overall, this is exacerbated by the extreme cultural difference between the boomers who own 95% of these cars and anyone under the age of 40. I know a handful of 20 somethings that have older relatives with classic cars who'd love to learn about them or own them but the older relative wants nothing to do with them and would laugh at the idea of passing down the car to younger ones when they're gone. Instead the kids will squabble over auctioning all that stuff off when the old ones pass on.


Don't even get me started on car shows. We have cruise ins monthly in my town and I take my Valiant over to the "younger" side every time. The old guys can't help but talk trash because I didn't keep the car as original as possible (try doing that with a 66 hardtop and it's plethora of 1-year parts) and seem to want to jump straight into bizarre political talking points within 2 minutes of meeting. The current crop of "old guys" are so different than my grandparents were at that age it's unbelievable. Those folks were molded through the depression and ww2 and left what they could with younger generations whether it be knowledge or hand me downs.
 
Looks like with each passing day our parts are turning from treasures to scrap. I have a lot of really nice parts that I spent money to buy and to clean ( don't like having greasy parts hanging around ). Finally decided to start getting rid of some of my excess parts. I have clean A body hoods, fenders, bumpers, decklids and all kinds of other parts including suspension and misc other things. I have come to the conclusion that they are becoming exponentially less desirable with each passing day. I don't want stuff sitting around that are never going to be used by me. I have some lower control arms right now that I am trying to sell. Someone asked for pictures of the date codes so I add more pictures to my ad. Person then ask for shipping charges to his destination. I tell him I can find out Monday and he sends me a " thumbs-up ". I package them up, go down to FedEx, stand in line and send him the quote FedEx gave me. Nothing! The guy vaporized , no response , nothing. Don't know, maybe he had a crisis in life or something but I think I'm pretty done. Next year when I am finally situated and fully moved into our new house I will load up the trailer and bring my "treasures" to the scrapper and never look back.
 
That's not a bad price on the control arms you're selling, even with shipping. If you load your unwanted parts up and take them to MATS swap meet in Vegas or any other Mopar show within reasonable driving distance, you might sell a lot of it. People like to put their hands on stuff when they buy it, so every few years I'll load some stuff up and sit in a few swap meets.
 
Problem is, in my younger days I did a ton of swap meet selling. I just don't feel like wasting a good show to sell parts. Nowaday's I want to relax walk around, look at cars and BS with people. Done with sitting in a lawn chair and babysitting parts when I could be having a good time enjoying the sights. I am going to put my last 2 cars together and get rid of everything else that I can trip over or have to move out of the way. Shipping has gotten outrageous. Fastenal used to ship large parts city to city through their stores but last time I checked they don't do that anymore. I literally shipped 2 fenders to Illinois for half of what UPS or FedEx would have charged. You just had to go to your nearest store to pick-up your shipment when it arrived. Worked great! My collection of parts is small compared to some people I know but I definitely don't want to leave a mess for my wife should something happen to me. It would all get thrown away anyway. Might as well start now.
 
Selling common or no-demand parts, has become pointless. Selling good stuff has become difficult, due to shipping and magazine geniuses, telling you what your stuff is worth...when they need it. I have probably a 100 rims of various sizes. Almost all 15", and some 4" BC rallyes and 15" as well. They're not worth shipping, and a PITA to haul to swap-meets. I foresee having a couple mopar parts sales at my home, then all the stuff goes to the scrapper buddy of mine. I'm liking seeing my garage/shop clean.
 
barbee6043 said:
One day our beloved old oem parts will be like those of the Model T guys!
Click to expand...

They already are. Ponder:

When most of use started down this greasy, rusty, disreputable road, it was probably about 40-60 years ago.
So, if I pick 50 years ago, that's 1975. The last Model Ts were 47 years old then.
How old is your car? The one I'm playing with now is 61 years old.

Back in about 1965, my father dragged a 1938 Lincoln out of a field. That car was 27 years old and needed a complete restoration.
He got it running and sold it, and got the down payment on his first house from that.
In about 1973, he dragged home a '46 Lincoln. That car was also about 27 years old. It also needed a complete restoration - rust, chrome, upholstery, seats completely destroyed, rust inside the cabin, wiring disintegrated, instruments, glass (bubbles), engine, drivetrain, everything needed to be replaced.
That car was 27 years old and completely destroyed, which was to be expected for such an old car.
As I said, the car I've got now is more than twice as old as that, and I bought it as a running, driving car that just needed going over.

Back when we had those two cars, Model T parts were a lot less old and less rare than the parts for our cars are now.

So, yes, our old OEM parts are just like those of the Model T guys. And WE are just like the Model T guys we knew when we were younger - old and cantankerous, and inscrutable to the younger guys.

- Eric
 
I see $69, obviously Chineseium upper control arms, it looks like for the pair, with bushings and balljoints on Ebay now! Can that be real? They claim free shipping. Shipping prices are out of hand. I have some pretty desirable parts that even probably 5 years ago would have easily sold. Us who were interested in those cars and trust me I still get excited looking at what we grew up with are seeing a whole new world that is changing quickly. I still want to put my cars together but I don't need the excess parts laying around that are getting harder and harder to sell. I have decided it is easier to make room and just bite the bullet, get rid of all the parts that I have quite a bit invested in and just scrap them. So this guy that was interested in my arms that I clearly explained to him were not being sold as date coded arms asked for pictures of the date codes. I send the pictures anyway. He asks for shipping cost so I go through the trouble of getting them after he has already seen the pictures and then finally a week later PM's me saying sorry he needs 311 not 412 arms. See what I mean. Burned out on even trying to make them of use to other people. Not worth the time or energy. I will keep trying to make useful to someone of what I would like to get rid of, but next year, I am making room.
 

If good used parts are harder and harder to find, and those same kind of parts are harder to sell to anyone if you want such gone..... what does that tell us?

How many potential buyers will call on a classic for sale, and his first question is does it have AC?
 
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