Here's the glass half full scenario:

Spend $400 on a round trip ticket from Boston to CA, buy a $5000 rust
free, functioning van and put it on a truck for $1000. You're back in
Boston for less than $6500 and you've got a rust-free van that needs
nothing.

There's two, high mileage rust-free vans on SF Craigslist for $1500.
There's also an engine for $800. A total of 8 vans up there right now,
all for less than $3000. I spent all of two minutes to find those.

Or... you could leave our rust-free vans here and help the auto body
guys in Boston make their boat payments.

Born in MA - Live in CA,
Jeff

On Dec 20, 2010, at 8:31 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:

> Date:    Mon, 20 Dec 2010 07:38:56 -0800
> From:    "Mark L. Hineline" <hineline@OCOTILLOFIELD.NET>
> Subject: Re: Slightly Overpriced GL on The Samba
>
> Ken,
>
> NJ isn't the Northeast. Have you seen what cars look like in
> Massachusetts?
>
> You are of course right about the rubber and so forth. But the real
> question is what is the opportunity cost to buying a Vanagon? Sure,
> you can take time off from work, fly to Arizona (from Boston), inspect
> the vehicle, maybe do this a couple of times because the ads are
> "optimistic," buy something like this for $4000, try to drive it home,
> have the hoses fail in Oklahoma, destroy the engine, hire a hauler to
> get the thing to Massachusetts, and then start restoring. I don't know
> if all of that is equal to $7000 or not, but it's getting there.
>
> If someone in Massachusetts or New Hampshire or Maine buys this and
> knows what they are doing, and then puts four or five thousand into
> it, that's not a bad deal. I would much rather start with a body that
> has little rust, no patchwork, and so forth.
>
> I know that you have expertise in this area, and I don't question it.
> But sometimes expertise narrows your idea of what makes sense. There
> are a number of different ways to end up with a nice, reliable
> Vanagon.
>
> Mark