In today’s Market Monday, we’re going to switch gears a bit and share a few of our tips for selling a collector German car on Bring A Trailer. This advice is based on practical experience we’ve had in both buying and selling cars on Bring A Trailer, as well as countless hours spent monitoring auctions and tracking sales on the platform.

For those who might not know, Bring A Trailer is one of several popular websites dedicated to selling interesting and collector vehicles through an online auction format. Pre-registered accounts are able to place multiple competitive offers in the hope of being the winning bidder. It’s similar to a live auction, but done from the comfort of your home.

While it’s known as an auction site today, Bring A Trailer began as a blog posting interesting project cars available at reasonable prices, often requiring a trailer to bring home. It built a solid audience of enthusiastic motorheads and when BAT decided to list cars for sale via online auction, the site’s popularity and revenue soared.

This led to a number of copycat sites, some more successful than others. Examples include Cars & Bids, PCarMarket, Hagerty Marketplace, Hemmings Auctions and more.

Bring A Trailer has a nice guide as to how their process works, so we won’t cover that here. In general, our online auction tips also apply to other online auctions sites like PCarMarket and Cars & Bids.

Perhaps the most influential factor in doing well on Bring A Trailer is to have the right car for the platform. Bring A Trailer is so popular and has so many listings at one time that they simply can’t accept every vehicle.

Exotics, Porsches, luxury cars, unusual imports never sold in the USA, muscle car classics and vintage trucks and SUVs are popular vehicles on Bring A Trailer. If your car fits in one of those categories, your chances of being accepted are much greater.

If your car is a “standard” used car, it’s best to list it on Ebay or another online classifieds site like Facebook Marketplace. Toyota Camrys and Honda CRVs are most likely not going to be accepted, with extreme exceptions (see below).

Mileage is a critical factor on Bring A Trailer. Unless it’s a 60-year old restored classic where mileage just doesn’t matter or a highly desirable car that is known to have a very stout engine, low mileage examples do the best on Bring A Trailer. The audience just isn’t interested in paying above market prices for high mileage vehicles.

There are still see listings on Bring A Trailer where the seller virtually backed the car out of the garage as-is, took the photos him/her self and submitted the car to the site. Needless to say, these don’t perform well unless it’s a popular and well-known car.

Detail your car before you photograph it, but don’t go overboard. For example, honest driver-quality cars in original condition are best cleaned and detailed without seeking perfection. You want tidy carpet and seats with as little dirt and staining as possible, clean cupholders and door pockets, clean pedal pads, etc. For the exterior, don’t just run the car through the auto wash. At a minimum, give the body and wheels a thorough cleaning and waxing. 

The level of investment you make on physical preparation varies greatly by the type of car and your car’s current condition. Consult an expert or knowledgable car friend if you are unsure. If you haven’t hand-washed or detailed a car before, hire a professional lest you do more damage than good.

Last, gather all your service history and documentation and photograph it for inclusion. Bidders on Bring A Trailer will bid higher on cars with a comprehensive and well documented service history. Be sure to hide any personal information in the photos. If you don’t have stacks of records, that’s OK, just include what you have.

Hire a professional photographer or a talented friend to photograph the car with a goal of at least 100 photos documenting every aspect of the interior and exterior. More “artistic” photography adds drama, but don’t overdo it at the expense of honest presentation. 

For cars with higher values, video can be a very compelling tool to motivate bidders. Driving videos, in particular, are almost required for all vehicles at this point. Simple walkaround videos provide a more dynamic view of the car, and 6-figure plus cars justify premium video stories.

Bring A Trailer now mandates including overall interior and undercarriage photos, so don’t forget those. BAT also offers a photography service for a fee if you’re not sure how to find a photographer near you.

The top online auction sites are more frequently pushing for “no reserve” auctions. We have our suspicions as to why, but Bring A Trailer currently loses money on any sale that does not meet its pre-arranged reserve. 

A reserve is a minimum price which bidding must reach in order for the car to sell. This is a nice option that protects the seller from a disastrously low sale price due to soft bidding. The problem for the auction site is that a no-sale means they don’t get their buyer’s commission, so they push for no reserve auctions or low reserves to ensure a higher sell-through rate.

Low-value cars will likely be rejected if you ask for reserve (see #1 above), so if you have a car that’s worth less than $15,000, seek another platform on which to sell unless you must sell quickly or are comfortable with the car selling for less than market value.

Bring A Trailer and Cars & Bids will tell you that no reserve auctions encourage more bidding on average. I’m sure they have data that backs this up, but sometimes bidders just don’t show up. Shill bidding (where you have a friend bid the car up) and refusing to sell because you don’t like the final price will get you banned from the platform.

In most cases, our advice is to ask for a reserve.

Selling a car at auction (live or online), just as it is when using a classifieds listing, is a lot of work. Detailing, photographing, gathering documentation, pre-purchase inspections, test drives and executing the post-sale transaction all take a significant amount of time to do or coordinate. Additionally, being engaged with commenters and bidders as the auction counts down is critical.

You may have heard the phrase “buy the seller, not the car.” I say, buy both. But the sentiment is valid. Buyers want to purchase a car from a reliable, trustworthy, and enthusiastic seller. Absentee sellers who only post at the beginning and then disappear or snarky, defensive sellers turn bidders off and crater a car’s chances at a good result. 

The ability for non-bidders and bidders to comment on your auction is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, you will have enthusiastic supporters for your car come to its defense and answer questions. On the other, keyboard warriors with more opinions than dollars can sometimes derail a good conversation.

The key is to stay positive, honestly present the car, answer important questions from bidders and accommodate reasonable requests if at all possible before the auction ends.

Stories of vehicles selling at prices much higher than market value due to spirited bidding coupled with the popularity of auction sites like Bring A Trailer make them a compelling proposition.

Just remember that auctions are risky with no guarantees. If you put some of these online auction tips into practice, however, you stand a much better chance of having a positive outcome for you and your buyer.

Wolf and Mare provides auction listing services for sellers of collector European cars. If you’re interested in selling your car via online auction, give us a call or drop a line!