It occurs to be that I forgot to mention the sweetest plum of all at a wrecker auction, the theft recovery.

Theft recoveries work like this: Jimmy and Suzie get their car stolen. They are sad, but the insurance company comes through and replaces their car.

Later, the car is recovered by the police, but Jimmy and Suzie already have a replacement car, and the insurance company isn’t evil enough to take back the new car and make them go back to their old car (not yet anyway).

So, the car is towed, and ends up at a police auction (if the local police have one), or one of the local wreckers (as is my case).

The result is a car that is undamaged that will sell for more than a wrecked car, but less than a traditionally auctioned car.

In Alberta, these cars do not even have to be inspected to be re-registered in many cases, and represent a substantial savings.

City and police auctions also yield abandoned vehicles at a good price, often abandoned because a person could not afford the impound and storage fees when their vehicle is towed. They are not always new or shiny, but when I was a teenager my first two cars in High School came from police auctions; a 77 Delta 88 Convertible for $800 and an 85 Honda Civic hatchback for $250. I cracked the block on that Convertible in my teenage foolishness, but I ran that Honda into the ground before I got rid of it.

Good Times

This entry was posted on Friday, April 8th, 2005 and is filed under Automotive, Spend Less. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.