I have been watching for projects on all the internet sites.
I've seen the model t value guide and baselines.
There seems to be a lot a nice T's lately listed on this forum for sale, at reasonable prices, some at very. My question to the forum is: the early models- 1913 and earlier, does a 1000 dollar a year in value still apply?
My dream car is a 1911 torpedo, original, of course.
r/s Bob
$1,000 /year. No, in my opinion, it doesn't.
A good all correct, or mostly all correct 1911 Torpedo will go in the neighborhood of $35,000 to $40,000, possibly higher, depending on condition. Restored or really nice unrestored (again- all correct parts) are pretty expensive. They are a beautiful car. I hope you find one that you're comfortable buying. My advice is if you're going to spend on an early brass T, try your best to make sure it has the correct year components. That's very important, because if you buy a 1911 car (for example), you should at least receive a 1911 car- not somebody's idea of one.
Hi Robert,
Northern California is a great place to look for a Model T.
You are relatively close to Portland & Seattle where some nice T's come from.
If you find one here in the Classifieds - post a thread for someone to come have a look with you that has experience.
FJ
I agree with Les about being sure the car you buy is correct. Sometimes through crookedness and more often through ignorance, many Model T's for sale have "the wrong stuff" in them. If you want a car with the correct parts, you'll need to do plenty of research and study to learn what they are and how to recognize them.
It is a difficult subject. So many older restorations "suffered from '50s/'60s restoration" ideas. Even those are no guarantee that a car is truly correct. And the more correct a car is, truly, the more valuable it is, regardless of the quality of its restoration. Most people do not realize that a truly correct car with a tired old restoration is really worth more than a sharp looking car with nearly half the parts are incorrect. Many people wind up paying too much for cars just because they look nice. (Happens on eBad all the time.)
Unless you have lots of money to play with, and don't mind losing a little of it on a wrong car, like Steve Jelf said "you'll need to do plenty of research and study to learn what they are and how to recognize them."
There are literally thousands of brass model Ts that are complete fakes, thousands more that are somewhat correctly done, but not really right. And there certainly is a place in the antique car hobby for these cars. As long as owners and especially sellers can be honest about what they are or are not.
This is all part of why I never thought Charlie Shavers' 1910 project was over-priced (certainly not by much). I was never close enough (500 miles?) to see it in person, but I spent literally almost two hours studying nearly a dozen photos he showed on the now defunct MTFCA forum a couple years ago. Only a couple intact original '10s I know of had better correct 1910 parts.
I also think that part of our hobby should be to take some of these older restorations, and re-accumulated cars, and make them better by changing the wrong pieces out and replacing them with more correct pieces. Little by little, more and more cars can become more correct. And I think everybody in the hobby would benefit from that. I know the cars and historic preservation in general would benefit from it.