> There needs to be a website listing all of the ridiculously priced vans
> that never ended up selling.  Otherwise, people only are encouraged to
> push up their prices, and never the other way around.  Eventually, I'd
> like to think I might be in the market for a early model Westfalia.  I
> just hope that by then all the owners haven't lost their marbles like
> some of these guys....

Yeah, I wish there WAS some way to track ACTUAL prices. The "sale price"
weirdness is pretty common everywhere, for anything. You see it on ebay all
the time, where vendors have twenty-odd instances of Product A up for $60
Buy It Now, and the auctions of Product A by others are numerous and all
obviously finishing around $40. My boss' wife looking to sell a portion of
his business for $200K based on what she found other such businesses listed
for, and a valuator telling her "it's worth maybe $20K-- the value of the
used tools and inventory". It reminds me of something I overheard my father
tell my brother when he was eight. My brother had a baseball card just like
one he'd seen for sale in a card shop for $50 and said "this card is worth
$50". My father replied "no, it COSTS $50 at that card shop. It's only WORTH
what you can get someone to buy it from you for."
 Vanagons are a tough bunch of vehicles to nail down on price. Usually the
fair-to-average ones are priced reasonably close to market value. It's the
good condition westies and syncro westy models that seem to get the bizarre
price inflation. For this I think the major instigator is none other than
GoWesty. On the one hand you have GoWesty selling 'em as fast as they can
get 'em at up to $70K (!), and on the other you have visually similar
vehicles languishing on samba for under $10K. I think too many people see
GoWesty prices and think they're just selling Vanagons, when really they're
selling a Vanagon plus some sort of guarantee. If you buy a syncro westy
from Joe Schmoe and it throws a rod 40 miles up the road despite Joe's
assurances it'd get you home no problem; well, what are the odds Joe is
gonna say anything other than "you got the van, I got the money". GoWesty at
the very least has its reputation as a business to uphold, plus a whole
yardful of parts vans and a dozen mechanics on staff, so they're more likely
to have gone over the vehicle thoroughly to catch any potential problems,
and a LOT more likely to try to make it right if they missed something.
 Personally, I'm waiting for a nice one with a blown engine that I can get
cheap. I can't afford to pay GoWesty to scrutinize my vehicle, and I don't
trust Joe Schmoe to have done a good job in his spare time.

--
John Bange
'90 Vanagon - "Geldsauger"