Date:         Tue, 26 Sep 95 17:41:03 EDT
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         "William R. Kennedy, NJIT CIAT, 201-596-5648" <kennedy@admin.njit.edu>
Subject:      RE: BUSES, VALUE, & RESALE

Paul Smiley wishes for a consistent bluebook of bus values.  Which would be
really neat, but is not something I'm expecting to show up on the magazine
racks.  It's clear from this list that the values vary by geography as much
as they do by decade, and that condition of an individual example swings
the price by about 95%.

This makes me (and I think others) really wacky shoppers.  I'm not in the
market for a VW van at all ... but I still go to look at any I see for
sale in my part of the county.  The tiny supply of VW buses for sale has
gone beyond sellers market and back into buyers market:  Any offer I might
make is going to be seriously considered because there aren't that many 
people who are crazy in this particular way.

The advice to look at lots of buses has been printed here repeatedly, and
is absolutely mandatory, as it would be in any collector's hobby.  We are
all collectors, in terms of the amount of trouble we go to to maintain our
vans.  We differ from other collectors in that we expose our prized col-
lectibles to the public roads on a daily basis.
B.
Wm Kennedy
kennedy@admin.njit.edu