For the Jaguar atleast, it seems that third time's the charm when it comes to selling the damn thing! With a second failed attempt to sell it the only thing to do is re-list the old girl, everything is saleable, you just need to find the right victim, er, person who wants to give you the right price!
All I needed to do now was to come up with your start price. After taking some advice I found that the starting price should be just 99p, and as for my reserve the general concensus was that there should not be one. Apparently this is because a low start will stimulate interest
but if I put a reserve on which is too high then that initial
momentum will not be maintained. If I put a reserve on which is “too
low” so that it is quickly met, then I may as well not bother with a
reserve and save yourself the money. If I start the auction at what I
wanted for it, whether that is my bottom price or my “reasonable”
price then I would risk losing bids and watchers to people who are wrapped
up in an auction with plenty of bidding action taking place.
I must admit I was quite nervous about selling the Jag with a
starting bid of just 99p, and with no reserve, but I guess if all else
fails atleast we'll know what a 2004 Jaguar X-type estate with an
agricultural engine is actually worth! As for why it's not selling for
what I'd hoped for, I have had a lot of time off this month, and it has
given me time to ponder things a bit, and have come up with a few
theories about this.
The first one is that I paid too much for it in the first
place, actually I think that this is far more of a fact than a theory! When I bid on the Jaguar back in February I was quite desperate
for a diesel estate car, not as desperate as I was about to become after
buying the Jag I might add, but you already know that part of the story so I'll not go into that here, again. So I put a bid in that was possibly too
high in the hope that no matter what, I'd win... BIG MITSAKE!! No matter
how deperate, bid to what you think its worth, no matter how much you
want it, or deal with the consequences, and don't whinge when it all
goes shitfaced and you end up selling it at a loss!
Secondly, going back
over the original listing I decided to have a look at the bidding
history where I noticed that Mr (or Mrs for that matter) d***6 put in quite a lot of bids in £10 incrememts, so I'm wondering if I got bid up by one of the friends of the person who sold me the Jag in the first place? Possibly
Probably!! But none of that matters, it's mine now, and so is the
problem of selling it to someone else! I have also wondered if this is a
case of bad karma coming and biting me in the bum! I mean when I
originally posted my little piece on the Jag when I originally
started to use it I said amoungst other things that my first impressions where that I was a bit disappointed. I've
never been a Jaguar man really, I never liked the E-type, I never liked
the XJS either.
I also think that what was going on with my little health worries, and all the trouble I had from the DVLA not letting me take it to Germany
because the previous owner had still not sent the documents in after I
had owned it for six weeks kinda set the tone for my Jaguar experience a
bit. I think that more than anything these two events combined put me off this car
from the start sadly, and this is is probably why I never gelled with it.
So, possibly not as complimentary as I could've been about the old thing, but
thats how I felt at the time. I have also wondered if Geoff Lawson, whos
last piece of design work for Jaguar before he died was the Jaguar
X-type has somehow got wind of how I felt about his final piece of design and is
looking down on me from Heaven saying "Clint, there's no way
you're gonna sell my beautiful car until you fully appreciate it and
understand what a fantastic car you have there! You must change your
ways and opinions of my beautiful car!" OK, probably not, but you never
know Please excuse my madness, I'm a little bit tired, and my painkillers are kicking in!
Anyway, On my first attempt to sell it I had just 48 watchers, but 18 bidders
and it ended at £1445.00. The second attempt I had another 12 watchers,
but 5 less bidders, this had a detrimental effect on the bidding, as it
ended at only £1120.00, which to be honest is not ideal! Especailly as I had made my mind up
that if it got to £1500, I'd let it go for that. The other thing I
noticed was that only one of the bidders on the second auction had bid
on the first one, and he/she bid less on it than they did the first time round. Of course,
looking at my two listings and seeing how much less bidding activity
happened the second time round I was a bit concerend that the third time it
would end around £800!! That wouldn't be good, as that would've put me about
£1000 out of pocket! That would make it hard to justify carrying on!
It would seem that the more times you put the same car on eBay the lower the price becomes. Anyhoo, I ditched the reserve price, which saved me about eight quid I think, and started the auction at the paultry sum of just 99p...
Now, I realise that at Mc Dowells and various other burger chain
resturaunts you can get a soggy cheeseburger for just 99p, and I am led
to believe that this is good value for money, but not as good value for
money as a Jaguar X-type for 99p. But I listed it, and stood back and hoped that it sold for
more than that, as believe me, if I only got 99p for it, I wouldn't be lovin' it!
When the bidding ended at just £1,260 it didn't exactly have me throwing a party, but what can you do? I guess you can either let it get to you, and dwell on it a
bit, or you just suck it up and move on. Of course, I can't make this sort of loss indefinately, but well just have to see how the next one goes I guess. Still, I realised when I started this project that I probably wouldn't
get my money back every time, but once in a while would be nice! I've
not even broken even once yet! In the plus column though I shouldn't
have much to worry about if HMRC come knocking! Also, if nothing else
what we've learned here is that a 2004 JAGUAR X-TYPE SE D Estate with roughly 8
months of MOT on it, and 184000 trouble free miles is worth
approximately £1,260.00! The funny thing is as I was worried that I
wouldn't get my money back for the Jag I decided to sell my non running Yamaha TW125 project in order to try and keep my bank balance topped up!
There it is in all it's lovelyness. Now, I described this as a non
running project of a bike with no keys or documents, I have never had
this running, and infact it was one of those projects that I was going
to get to "some day" but as I felt the Jaguar wasn't going to
get my money back I thought that it was time to release the TW back
into the wild in order to keep my toybox fund topped up. That way Hopefully I can
continue to play for a bit. What I found strange is that my perfectly
good Jaguar X-type estate, thats all good and running and in a fit state
to hit the Queens highway had 1064 page views, 69 watchers, and 24
bids. Very few people asked me any questions about it, and it didn't
seem to have much interest in it, possibly because it's the third time
it was listed, but I don't know.
However, in contrast to the Jaguar, my
unroadworthy, non running Yamaha TW project had 3794 page views, 197
watchers, and 37 bids, and I was constantly answering all sorts of
questions about it, most of which had already been answered if the
person who was asking the question had bothered to read the listing, but there you go. I
find the popularity of my bike to be very odd, don't get me wrong,
they're a nice bike when they're all up together, and roadworthy, but
mine isn't. I guess it's just a case of the bike is cheaper/easier to do
up, and probably more likely to appeal to Dads who might want a project
to do with their kids, I'm guessing it's more a case of just a
different audience. Having said all that, the fella who bought the
Jaguar had 334 ebay feedbacks and has been a member almost since the
dawn of time, and the fella who has bought the bike is a new member,
without any feedback. My feeling was that the bike probably didn't sell, but the guy showed up just a couple of days later, put the cash in my hand and away it went! As for the Jaguar?
Finally, away that went too! So then, what have we learned from all this? Well, it would appear that a Jaguar X-type estate is quite hard to sell, and a 2004 Jaguar estate with about 184000 miles on it, and about 8 months MOT left is not worth anywhere near the £1800.13 that I originally paid for it way back in February, it is infact as I said before it is only worth just £1,260.00! Ouch! But atleast it's gone, the guy that showed up to collect it was just a lad, I'd say he was maybe twenty - thirty something. I'm guessing that he didn't have a lot of spare cash, and he probably needed a break, I remember when I was about that age I could never get enough cash together to buy anything half decent, and in all honesty, I'm glad he got a good deal on the Jaguar, and I really hope that it serves him well, and wish him the best of luck with the old thing.
What else can I tell you about my month (or two) as the owner of a Jaguar X-type estate? Well, when I bought it back in February it was to be used for a trip to see my friends in Germany, and as you all know, it never got to go in the trip, so it's starring role in my Twelve Cars In A Year thread got pushed back a month or so. When I originally got it the mileage was 182,236 and today, as it drove away from me it was rolling over to 183,358 which means if my basic maths is correct, I've covered 1108 miles in my (extended) months ownership. In this time it burned off 27.17 UK Gallons of diesel, which means that I was getting about 40.8 MPG not too shabby considering that a lot of the time I just driving about town in the traffic. Although, the onboard computery type thingy says...
But according to my notes and calculations, as I said it was getting on
for 41 MPG, but perhaps the onboard computer under-etimates so as not to
lull you into a false sense of security or something. The engine in mine was based on the Ford Duratorq ZSD unit as used in the Mondeo and Transit, and despite its somewhat agricultural heritage it lugged the Jaguar along effortlessly, and fairly qiuetly. But that being said it never felt like it was going to stir my soul. But then I guess a Jaguar X-type isn't a soul stirring type of car. It's a family car, a load lugger, simple as that. It's not meant to be anything spectacular, or even special, it's just designed to haul people and their stuff about, like pretty much all family cars are.
To be
honest I'm still struggling to tell you anything about the Jag, my mind has
just gone blank, and this is probably due to the fact that as far as
cars go, it was pretty average really. By the way, Mr. Lawson, if you are tuning in to my words of wisdom about
your car from the other side, I would like to take this opportunity to
say that my initial reaction to driving your car was wrong, it has grown
on me to be honest in my extented care of it. The turning point was
when I had to race down the motorway back to the hospital to get my throat looked at at 3am one morning. I had to
press the car quite hard, infact VERY hard, much MUCH harder than I
would ever drive under normal circumstances, and it surprised me a great
deal, and it made me quite aware of just how capeable this oil burning
Jaguar really is. It turned from something in my mind that was a lardy,
heavy, dull, blunt tool of a car that lumberred along into something
really quite sharp, accurate, and astonishingly fast, dare I say even a
bit sporty!! It really came alive that morning, and it really showed
it's pedigree, later that day when I was sat back at home reflecting on
the days events I realised that I was genuinely surprised by how it
went, and handled, I never thought it had it in it. I think that it's
actually a far better car than I originally had thought. I still don't
think I'd ever really gel with it as it's just not as good as I think it should be, but my opinion of it has chaged
quite a lot.
Also, there were still a couple of other niggles. One was the interior
rear view mirror, and this is probably specific to me, and people who
are about my size. For me, it's just in the damn way all the time. I
reckon Jaguar could've mounted it another three or maybe even four
inches higher on the windscreen and it would've been fine. The other
thing about it I don't like is that I found the seats are a bit small for
my lardy arse, and therefore not very comfy, plus I thought the ride was a
bit harsh, as a ten year old Jaguar should in my opinion have a better ride than a thirty year old lowered Talbot!
In the back my two little Monsters also thought it wasn't the most comfortable ride, they said that the seats were too hard, and they were too cold in the morning. My feeling is that in a couple of months when the weather warms up they'd be complaining that the seats were too hot and sticky. I've got to wonder why we crave leather seats so much? I mean in the Winter when you get in they're so damn cold to sit on, and come the Summer, they scorch your ass when you sit down. In all honesty this is another area where my Dads Rover 75 would be better, it's velour upholstery is always a teparature that isn't too hot, or too cold when you initially sit down. Maybe velour is the way forward!
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