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ebay #0828 Chalet on eBay for a BiN of $45,000 (yeh, right) .. oh wait, now $39,999 in Port St Lucie Jan 2026 FB Mktplace relisting

a77blazerchalet

a77blazerchalet

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https://www.ebay.com/itm/186111895405 auction ends Oct 18 before 5am

GSMFWCCDF — God save me from wannabe classic car dealer/flippers. This one is Chalet #0828, built in 8/76, with a Buy-it-Now price of $45,000, notwithstanding that it has non-original repainted side accent colors and is missing all its stripes and back door logo decal, items that are critical if the goal is to achieve maximum 'original collector vehicle value.' This seller also listed this #0828 at the Facebook group page named "Bring A Trailer" https://www.facebook.com/groups/575448483072968/permalink/1334622290488913/ (which apparently has zero affiliation with the official "Bring a Trailer" online auction site) on 10/7/23 for the same amount. Such a listing at FB seems to also generate a standard FB Marketplace listing: https://www.facebook.com/commerce/listing/344109211345649/ or maybe this latest seller simply just listed it there as well.

The prior Lenior Tennessee seller's FB Marketplace ad from just 12 days prior is still functioning, https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/684980280223327/ but has the label of "SOLD, $21,000" at the top. The prior owner attempted to auction this #0828 at the official "Bring a Trailer" site, his auction ended on August 4th at a reserve-not-met figure of $18,250 https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1976-chevrolet-k5-chalet/ …… likely a result of the reasonably informed bidders there knowing that the rig has sizable restoration faults which are detrimental to any seller achieving a top end 'collector vehicle value' price.
 
Update: This one bombed at its auction, where the ending "reserve-not-met-by-a-long-shot" bid was $17,100. If the kid seller bought it for $21 grand, he made a very unwise investment.
 
The entertainment continues. On Oct 23, the seller listed it at Facebook Marketplace with a price drop to $40,000. That listing has since disappeared, but at least I got a screengrab of it at the time for posterity. It'll go into my paper printouts of these which I've been keeping for years. Just now, I spotted that, according to his newest FB Marketplace listing's timestamp, two days back he dropped the price to $33,500: https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/702773745246831/ . If he bought the rig using borrowed money, he could be in a spot of trouble. That's exactly what happened when I bought my former #1747 Chalet back in 2006, the guys were trying to flip it for double the money they borrowed, and when I called to see it, the first person I talked to was the girlfriend who loaned the money to buy it and she wanted whatever big or little profit there was in the deal pronto. I offered what I thought was break-even money for it, but I had misread the original newspaper ad price, and they ended up with a $500 profit out of owning it for two weeks. Nice work if ya can get it ....
 
Seeing how #828 is a fairly clean example from what I can see in the pics, what would be an honest price in today's market? I know it's far from original, just wondering about a decent price?

I've always wanted a camper version K5 but it looks like they're out of reach for me at this point. I can no longer do the work to rebuild a Chalet or the smaller slide in pop tops.
 
Desert_K5 said:
....what would be an honest price in today's market? ... just wondering about a decent price?
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Good question on values, much of what you see on these about values is vastly overinflated by just a dozen or less guys who had loads of money to buy one but never questioned the asking prices or looked into the sales history of the rigs they were buying. See the decade-old update I added in the "Buying and Selling" section of the ancient blazerchalet website's FAQ page, and then figure in a factor for inflation. Contrary to all the hoopla in March 2021 about Chalet #0429 selling for $125 grand at the online Bring a Trailer auction, all the other bidders dropped out after the $47,500 point except for the last three who kept it going because they apparently thought they were buying a pristine time-capsule rig that never left the dealership it was delivered to. More dollars than sense, those three had. I suggest the rig was over-restored compared to it being "untouched," and the indicator that it was a multi-owner rig was the used car dealership logo plate on the lower left of the camper unit. I got contradictory stories of why that plate was on the rig, and one of the other potential bidders told me he got really dicey replies on what the actual mileage was on the undated title the sellers showed in their auction.

So, fundamentally if the top end for an otherwise very accurately restored rig or a exceptionally well preserved rig is under $50 grand, a person needs to work backwards from that price when it comes to their own rig and what it costs to have the paint and other restoration done right to match the ideal condition of "factory showroom new." The auction of Chalet #0058 at Barrett-Jackson in January 2022 for $30 grand pretty much cemented in concrete how much a Chalet is worth in real world auctioning when the rig is nearly there but still needs additional work to take it to "showroom new" condition. From that point, you just keep working backward to figure out what the value of the rig is. Rust repair is a huge factor, and whether an owner wants to repaint acres of sheet metal, and to what level - Earl Scheib "good enough" or something that will keep looking good after a decade?

To get the Chalet #0828 to the $30 grand level of approaching "showroom new", a person would have to do a repaint of the truck sides and spend big bucks to recreate the missing camper stripes. After that, who knows how much additional is needed to guarantee it is a daily driver. Its new gas tank is nice, but will it be needing a radiator soon, and how happy are the seals in the transfer case? Factor all that in and likely this one - with it having a better than average interior apparently needing hardly any work to get it in great shape - gets knocked down in value to something around maybe $20 grand or less. That might explain why some savvy bidders took that into account and sent its reserve-not-met highest bid to only $18,250 under the prior seller at the beginning of September. If the current seller paid more than that afterward thinking it would be a cinch to flip it for more than double the price, he's underwater, that's the reality of the situation.
 
flatland said:
11-06-23 #828 For sale on Facebook in Lincolnton, Ga $29,5
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Facebook

www.facebook.com www.facebook.com

Many thanks for spotting that! Busy as I am on other things, I don't always have enough available opportunities to log into FB.

Juh-eeeze! Seven days after his Oct 30 FB Marketplace which I linked to in my post #3 above, it appears desperation time is really settling in with the seller's latest $4 grand price drop yesterday. Wondering if he's been deleting the prior Marketplace listings rather than editing the price, since FB would show a line-thru of the prior price ....
 
From the unreal to the surreal. I thought the other kid speculator seller of Chalet #0828 (in the just above update post alerted to me by flatland) was stuck underwater with his purchase of it from the prior seller, whose own attempt to auction it at the Bring a Trailer site bombed out in his reserve-not-met final result of $18,250. But the last of the kid speculator's FB Marketplace ads is still up, showing it as sold for $29,500.

This time, I can't actually tell if this newest listing from last week is a parody one, considering how the late Rush Limbaugh used to make fun of people who were not especially bright by explaining thing prefaced with a statement like "For those of you living in Rio Linda and Port St Lucie, 'prefaced' means something that comes before something else…" The guy is using all the same photos out of the kid speculator's ad, except for the last photo thumbnail of the Grand Rapids Michigan $0429 Chalet that he claims … was in Miami.

So, no joke on my part: "1976 Chevrolet k-5 blazer chalet $115,000 Listed 6 days ago in Port St Lucie, FL"

Facebook

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I'm not a big fan of the quality of a Chalet, but if you have seen the price of new slide in units $45k won't touch one....

And $ 45K won't pay for a quality off the chassis restoration for the Blazer
 
a77blazerchalet said:
From the unreal to the surreal. I thought the other kid speculator seller of Chalet #0828 (in the just above update post alerted to me by flatland) was stuck underwater with his purchase of it from the prior seller, whose own attempt to auction it at the Bring a Trailer site bombed out in his reserve-not-met final result of $18,250. But the last of the kid speculator's FB Marketplace ads is still up, showing it as sold for $29,500.

This time, I can't actually tell if this newest listing from last week is a parody one, considering how the late Rush Limbaugh used to make fun of people who were not especially bright by explaining thing prefaced with a statement like "For those of you living in Rio Linda and Port St Lucie, 'prefaced' means something that comes before something else…" The guy is using all the same photos out of the kid speculator's ad, except for the last photo thumbnail of the Grand Rapids Michigan $0429 Chalet that he claims … was in Miami.

So, no joke on my part: "1976 Chevrolet k-5 blazer chalet $115,000 Listed 6 days ago in Port St Lucie, FL"

Facebook

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He’s making a big deal about it having a 400. Desirability issues aside, wasn’t the 400 part of the package?
 
CT-BLAZER said:
YES a V-8 400 engine & T400 were standard.... It was in GMs best platform
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Correction, sbc 400 and th350 with np203 was the standard for chalet and 3.73 gears.
I was laughing when I saw him bragging about the 400.
I can't believe I sold mine for $2500.
It was rust free low mileage and great interior.
Paint was not the best.
 
imiceman44 said:
... I was laughing when I saw him bragging about the 400. ...
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bigjbear said:
.... wasn’t the 400 part of the package?
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I'd have to dig out all my paper printouts since it is not something I specifically kept track of in my mega-spreadsheet, but among the sales ads I've seen over the years combined with the VINs I have collected, my impression is that the engines in these Chalets & Casa Grandes were pretty much evenly split between 350s and 400s.
 
a77blazerchalet said:
I'd have to dig out all my paper printouts since it is not something I specifically kept track of in my mega-spreadsheet, but among the sales ads I've seen over the years combined with the VINs I have collected, my impression is that the engines in these Chalets & Casa Grandes were pretty much evenly split between 350s and 400s.
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I know I have not seen as many as you have but I have not seen any that didn’t have the 400.
Also every truck I saw had the highest option C.
I am guessing that dictated what engine came standard, it would make sense
 
This just doesn't stop. The Port St Lucie owner dropped his initial Facebook Marketplace asking price from $115 grand to $69,999, but in his new-today Feb 14 Buy-it-Now listing, he's hiked his asking price by $10 grand. This listing lasts through March 15th ...... and how many beyond with price drops? Who knows? Meanwhile, he's still using the photos from the prior punk kid flip saler who tried the BiN eBay listing of $45 grand, and he's continuing the line out of his original $115 grand FB Marketplace listing about the 'super rare' 400 engine option.

www.ebay.com

1976 Chevrolet Blazer k5 Blazer Chalet | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for 1976 Chevrolet Blazer k5 Blazer Chalet at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
www.ebay.com
 
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New update on this one, last seen in mid-April in an eBay Buy-it-Now for $57,995. $12,995 price drop as of Dec 5 in several FB Groups sales listings that default to a FB Commerce page when you click on the additional photos link in them, one example of at least 4 below. Still going on about the "rare 400" and about anotner one "sold in Miami for 120k" (it was Chalet #0429 in Grand Rapids Michigan with the used car dealer plate on the back despite the claim that it was never sold from the 1976 Chevy dealership), and that "If someone wanted to restore the truck to perfect condition it would be worth over 100k" ....... meaning pay a vinyl vehicle wraps shop a few grand to exactly replicate the original vinyl camper stripes and back door decal it's missing. The line about "average sale price from last few years on these range from around 60-80k in this condition" is a new bit. He's only around $40 grand too high on the "average" from the sales results I'm aware of ......

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the ASKING prices might be that high . . but how many sell or just flip from 1 dealer to another and or location to make it look like there hot items ?
 
sweetk30 said:
... how many sell or just flip from 1 dealer to another and or location to make it look like there hot items ?
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That is a good question. Chalet #1741 seemed to be one of those examples years back, it started out at a Napa County CA classic car dealer at just under $8 grand in 2011, then did a loop through two more in Chicago and Florida with sizable hikes each time, only to end up back at a different CA dealer at $16 in 2013 where the dealer said it was "a nice original truck." No, it was significantly modded by the longtime owner before 2011.

It's pretty much the story of these, either via classic car dealer flipsalers for wannabe private citizen flipsalers. Besides my mega-spreadsheet list of them, I also have a simple text file of the ad listings I've found ever since 2005. It started out as nothing more than just a few copy 'n pastes of the text out of the sales ads because I was looking to buy one and wanted to have the same kind of 'comps' that a person uses to haggle with a home seller about their price compared to similar size/condition houses. Over time, what I've seen is really too many of these rigs being flipsaled from one classic car dealer to the next, with increased prices and almost nothing is done to them outside of things like new tires / radiator hoses / etc. The next suspicious thing lately is what Facebook Marketplace shows as "sold" prices. One rig recently (it shall remain nameless, since I need more info), was bombing out in its eBay bid auction, so the seller yanked the listing a day before it was supposed to end. But in his FB Marketplace listing later, it showed a "sold" price about double what the eBay auction bids were. When I found the same rig later in a Classic.com sales history page, it said its purchase price "reported via public record" was $30 grand less than the FB Marketplace "sold" price. That new owner then didn't get his reserve price at the Bring a Trailer auction of it, but said the top bid was "close to what he wanted" - deeply suspicious there because the top bid was less than half what the supposedly "sold" price was from the prior seller. Somethin' really fishy going on with that one …..
 
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